With increased acceptance of credit as a ‘solution’ for socio-economic challenges, financial inclusion has risen as a top agenda point for international organizations and state governments alike. This has invited large financial institutions as investors who extend loans to unbanked populations in ever-growing numbers. Political economy scholarship explains this in ‘economic’ terms of profit accumulation or in Marxist conceptions of capitalist overaccumulation and financial spillover to new markets. Departing from solely economic explanations, this paper examines financial inclusion among tribal populations in West Bengal, India, revealing continuities of colonial policies that privatize public goods and perpetuate racialized hierarchies. Privatization contributes to making credit an essential feature of sustaining everyday life. Through historically-attentive ethnographic methods with financial inclusion institutions in West Bengal, this paper highlights the centrality of indigeneity, the ‘tribal’ and racial capitalism undergirding contemporary financial inclusion. The enduring legacies of colonial finance showcase the racialised politics of financial inclusion and credit markets for underbanked communities.