Google Cloud Outage Disrupts Revolut and UK Banks
Google Cloud network failures in London caused widespread service disruptions for Revolut, Lloyds, and other financial institutions on October 20.
A significant service outage in the europe-west2 region of Google Cloud disrupted numerous businesses and public services on October 20, 2026. The failures, which began around 0608 GMT in London, caused intermittent network errors that impacted a wide array of clients, including the National Health Service England, Royal Mail, and the budgeting app Emma.
Financial institutions faced severe disruptions, most notably Revolut, where millions of customers were unable to access accounts, perform card payments, make ATM withdrawals, or execute transfers. The impact extended beyond the United Kingdom to users in France, Spain, and Singapore. Revolut confirmed that customer funds and data remained safe while its engineering team worked to restore services.
Other banking entities including Lloyds Banking Group, its subsidiary Halifax, and HSBC also reported issues with online and app services. The outage highlighted a critical dependency within the financial sector on a small number of cloud providers, a vulnerability previously flagged by European and UK regulators. Google confirmed its engineering teams investigated the issue, specifically noting an incident affecting Google Security Operations, though a definitive cause was not immediately disclosed.
