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Google Outage Disrupts UK Banks And Revolut Following London Power Event

Google Outage Disrupts UK Banks And Revolut Following London Power Event

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We apologise to all who are affected by the disruption, Google Cloud said on Tuesday, October 20, 2026. A power event at its London europe-west2 region disrupted Revolut, UK banks, courts and other online services. Google said recovery had begun, with full restoration tentatively expected around 2pm.

The failure hit the europe-west2-b zone, according to The Guardian’s account, which said services began returning around 1pm London time. By then, card payments, cash withdrawals and court hearings had been disrupted.

Google Sets Out the europe-west2 Timeline

The incident first appeared on Google’s service health dashboard on Monday evening UK time, the, BBC reported. Early Tuesday, the dashboard flagged elevated errors and intermittent network failures.

The Register put the start of the downtime at 0608 UTC and listed affected services including BigQuery Data Transfer Service, Cloud Run, Google Kubernetes Engine and Google App Engine; it said Google offered no workaround at that stage.

Later, Google told customers a possible workaround was to migrate affected workloads to another zone or region. It tentatively expected full recovery by 2pm. Another outlet cautioned that the estimate is provisional and does not guarantee every dependent app returns at once, since companies still have to restart systems and check connections.

Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC Respond to the Outage

Revolut said its customers’ money and data were safe. Its statement, relayed in Ireland, said the team had been working on the fault since it was identified that morning. Affected functions included card payments, transfers, cash withdrawals and sign-in. Some Irish supermarkets warned shoppers they might not be able to pay with Revolut.

Lloyds said its app was working normally but that we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning. HSBC said it was aware some customers had difficulty accessing services and was monitoring a situation that also affected other organisations. Halifax told a user on X it was working to fix app and online problems.

Google Cloud Outage Delays Remote Court Hearings and Disrupts Deliveries

The video system for remote hearings in England and Wales failed through the morning, and several hearings were believed delayed, the, Guardian said. HM Courts and Tribunals Service acknowledged the problem.

DPD said it was aware of connection issues. Budgeting app Emma blamed the Google Cloud outage and said it was not a security issue.

Not every report is confirmed. The BBC noted that few companies explicitly tied their problems to Google, and DailyCoin said the cause of some reported disruptions, including at ING Germany and Halifax, was not independently confirmed in every case.

Sources Differ on How Far Revolut Was Hit

Euronews described a worldwide outage, with users in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Japan reporting trouble, while saying it was unclear whether every user was affected.

Google Outage Disrupts UK Banks And Revolut Following London Power Event
Photo: The Guardian

Downdetector logged more than 1,500 Revolut reports shortly after 8am BST, per the BBC. Revolut’s status page showed 30 services partially unavailable, according to Kursiv Media; another outlet counted 28. Customer totals vary too: Euronews cited 13 million UK users and more than 80 million globally.

Financial Regulators Contact Google as Insurers Question Policy Coverage

The Financial Conduct Authority said it was in touch with Google and seeking more information. The Guardian called the outage the first major test for the FCA and Bank of England since they gained powers this summer to regulate critical cloud providers serving UK financial firms.

Insurance trade coverage raised a coverage question. George Grimshaw, divisional head of cyber and technology at Clear Group, said many older or cheaper policies pay dependent business-interruption claims only after a cyberattack. An accidental power event like this wouldn’t qualify, he said.

He added that waiting periods of typically eight to 24 hours could mean a shorter outage never triggers cover.

Google Cloud outages rock Revolut's app and payments, hitting other banks too

For Alphabet, an investor analysis said limited financial impact is likely if the outage proves contained and rare, but that major customers rethinking cloud rollouts would hurt the bull case.

Google planned a further update on Tuesday afternoon, and Revolut had given no restoration time.

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Google Cloud Outage Disrupts Revolut Banking Services in Europe | APT
Alphabet (GOOGL): Google Cloud outage in London hits Revolut, ING Germany | Oct 20, 2026
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