Google Cloud power outage disrupts Revolut payments and UK banking services

A power failure affecting Google Cloud’s London infrastructure has disrupted banking and payment services across the UK, leaving Revolut customers unable to complete some card transactions, access accounts or transfer funds.

The disruption also coincided with problems affecting Halifax’s online and mobile banking services, while customers of Lloyds Bank and HSBC reported difficulties accessing their accounts.

Google confirmed that the incident began at 07:08 BST on 20 October in its europe-west2 region, which serves London. The company initially reported widespread service errors and intermittent network failures before identifying a power-related outage affecting one of its availability zones.

In an update issued at 12:12 BST, Google said the power event had been mitigated, although the restoration of affected infrastructure and services was continuing.

Revolut confirmed that multiple services were experiencing disruption, including card payments, cash withdrawals, transfers and account access. The company said customers’ funds and data remained secure while engineers worked to restore normal operations.

Halifax separately acknowledged difficulties affecting its app and online banking. Reports of problems involving other banks also increased, although direct connections between every reported failure and Google’s infrastructure had not been established.

The disruption extended beyond financial services, with delivery companies and other major UK digital platforms reporting operational problems.

For banks and payment providers, the incident highlights the concentration risks created by dependence on large cloud infrastructure providers.

Cloud computing allows financial institutions to scale transaction processing and digital services without maintaining equivalent infrastructure internally. However, failures at a shared provider can affect several businesses simultaneously, potentially interrupting payment initiation, customer authentication and access to account information.

The immediate consequences are particularly significant where customers rely on digital accounts for everyday payments or businesses depend on continuous access to transaction services.

For corporate banking and working-capital management, interruptions to payment infrastructure can delay supplier settlement, restrict access to liquidity information and complicate treasury operations. These are potential consequences of such outages, rather than confirmed losses from this incident.

The disruption raises renewed questions about operational resilience, contingency arrangements and the ability of financial institutions to maintain critical services when a major technology provider experiences infrastructure failure.

Although Google reported that the initial power problem had been mitigated, the full duration, financial impact and extent of affected banking services had not been established at the time of reporting.