This thesis consists of three main essays on the global dimension of financial inclusion. These empirical analyses are different, yet related to each other. The main focus of the thesis is on constructing a broader multidimensional measure of financial inclusion as a composite index that can be used to assess the ease of and use of the access to financial markets. Additionally, as one of the main contributions of this study, access to other financial institutions such as microfinance institutions, post offices and cooperatives, has been added to the analysis to explore its impact on poverty and Islamic finance. The International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics and Financial Access Survey databases, the World Bank’s Global Financial Development and Global Findex databases, and the survey data by Beck et al. (2006a) are used to collect the indicators of the indices. Using the broader multidimensional financial inclusion indices as a proxy of financial access, the study aims to assess the impact of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in the third chapter. In the next chapter, using the constructed financial inclusion indices as a proxy of financial exclusion, it aims to explore the impact of Islamic finance on financial exclusion to examine why our constructed financial inclusion indices are better measurements of financial access. Using the constructed indices in two different analyses, this thesis tests the arguments in studies that have made original contributions in the literature, to explore the predictability and comparability of these indices as the proxy of financial inclusion.