**1. Introduction**

Alleviation of poverty and enhancing opportunities for inclusive economic growth in part demands that the population is financially included to be able to participate in the internet-based new economy. Financial inclusion enables households to undertake transactions required for daily living as well as social protection [1]. Through financial inclusion, economic agents, for example, households, enterprises, and the government, access financial products that improve their well-being and resilience to unforeseen disruptions such as climate change and pandemics (e.g. COVID-19 and Ebola).

It is paradoxical that in a globalized world, more than one-third of its population is excluded from the formal financial system. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that appropriate financial services can help improve household welfare and promote small enterprises. The traditional financial ecosystem is characterized by weaknesses that financially exclude majority of the population. Although mobile money coupled with digital payments can enable the financial inclusion of the financially excluded, empirical evidence demonstrates that small-sized transactions in the conventional setting are associated with high costs, which makes them unfeasible. Mobile money technology in combination with digital payments can permit small-sized transactions at a cost that is affordable by agents. Well-thought-out combinations of digital payments and mobile money technology can potentially reduce the turn-around time for bulky financial transactions [2]. Due to the aforementioned benefits, leaders in low-income countries have embraced mobile money technology and digital payments to overcome financial exclusion to facilitate inclusive economic growth.

Although none of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 is dedicated to finance and financial inclusion, this chapter sought to answer the following questions. To what extent can mobile money technology integrated with digital payments enable financial inclusion, which in turn can lead to sustainable development goals? To what extent financial products on mobile money technology and digital payments enhance social inclusion and thereby inclusive-poverty reducing economic growth? What inhibitors stand in the way of mobile money technology and digital payments in realizing financial inclusion to facilitate inclusive economic growth?

This chapter describes how mobile money and digital payments enable financial inclusion. The paper is organized into five sections and unfolds as follows. The next section presents the conceptualization of financial inclusion while the third section describes the relationship between mobile money and digital payments for financial inclusion. Mobile money and digital payments as enablers for the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the subject matter of the forth section, while the final section concludes.
