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 the Global South, promising expanded access to payments, credit, and financial services for previously excluded populations. While digital finance has delivered measurable gains in access and efficiency, growing evidence suggests that these benefits coexist with new forms of risk and inequality. This paper critically examines whether FinTech promotes genuine financial inclusion or instead generates new mechanisms of financial control and exclusion. Moving beyond access-based definitions, the analysis conceptualises inclusion in terms of agency, dignity, and protection. It identifies three key risks associated with FinTech expansion: data-driven surveillance, algorithmic bias and automated exclusion, and conditional access 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 Global South. The paper concludes that governance, rather than technology alone, determines whether FinTech advances inclusive and equitable development.