Digital finance is widely promoted as a pathway to financial inclusion, economic empowerment, and development across the Global South. This paper challenges such narratives by arguing that fintech-led inclusion has generated a new form of structural dependency best described as Digital Financial Colonialism. Drawing on theories of data colonialism, surveillance capitalism, and critical political economy, the paper conceptualises how externally owned digital financial infrastructures enable data extraction, algorithmic governance, and the erosion of economic and data sovereignty. It develops a conceptual framework identifying three core mechanisms: data extraction and external value capture, algorithmic governance of credit and risk, and structural dependency arising from platform dominance. The analysis demonstrates that inclusion focused primarily on access, without ownership, data rights, and regulatory capacity, risks reproducing extractive relationships in digital form. The paper concludes that digital financial inclusion, if poorly governed, may deepen inequality and constrain policy autonomy, and calls for development strategies that prioritise data sovereignty, algorithmic accountability, and domestic institutional capacity.