Digital Financial Inclusion or Digital Financial Control? Power, Risk, and Governance in FinTech Expansion across the Global South

FinTech has emerged as a central pillar of financial inclusion strategies across theGlobal South, promising expanded access to payments, credit, and financial services forpreviously excluded populations. While digital finance has delivered measurable gains inaccess and efficiency, growing evidence suggests that these benefits coexist with new formsof risk and inequality. This paper critically examines whether FinTech promotes genuinefinancial inclusion or instead generates new mechanisms of financial control and exclusion.Moving beyond access-based definitions, the analysis conceptualises inclusion in terms ofagency, dignity, and protection. It identifies three key risks associated with FinTech expansion:data-driven surveillance, algorithmic bias and automated exclusion, and conditionalaccess through digital identification systems. Drawing on a political economy perspective,the paper introduces the concept of digital financial colonialism to explain how value extraction,externalised risk, and asymmetric power relations shape outcomes in the GlobalSouth. The paper concludes that governance, rather than technology alone, determineswhether FinTech advances inclusive and equitable development.