Millions of Britons woke up unable to pay, transfer money or even log in to their bank accounts on Tuesday morning, after a technical failure in Google Cloud's London region rippled through some of the UK's biggest banking platforms. Digital bank Revolut bore the brunt: card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, currency exchange and stock trading were all unavailable at the peak of the disruption. Lloyds, HSBC and Halifax also reported problems with online services, as did delivery firm DPD, property website Rightmove, BT and Royal Mail — a single region failure cascading across entire swathes of the British economy.
Google Cloud said its europe-west2 region, based in London, began experiencing "multiple issues" shortly after 6:08am GMT, with "elevated errors and intermittent network failures" affecting a range of services. "Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue. We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption," the company said in a status update. It gave no cause and no timeline for a full restoration.
Revolut takes the hardest hit
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Revolut's outage was directly tied to the Google Cloud failure. The digital bank, which counts tens of millions of customers across Europe, uses Google Cloud for core services — and its status page on Tuesday showed almost everything red or amber: payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, its trading platform and even sign-ins.
"We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers' money and data are safe," a Revolut Bank spokesperson said. "We've been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologize to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused."
The human cost showed up on social media, where Revolut customers described being stranded at supermarket checkouts and petrol stations. One customer said their elderly mother had been waiting at a till for an hour, unable to pay for her shopping. Outage monitor Downdetector logged more than 1,500 problem reports shortly after 8am.
Lloyds said customers could still log into its app normally but that some online services were affected. "We are aware of similar issues affecting other organizations and are monitoring the situation closely," a spokesperson said. ING Germany separately reported problems with online banking and its app, though it was unclear whether that incident was connected.
A growing single point of failure
Tuesday's incident is the latest in a string of reminders that the world's most critical industries now rest on infrastructure owned by a handful of US technology giants. Two years ago, a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike crashed millions of Windows computers worldwide, grounding flights and crippling hospitals. Last year, a major Amazon Web Services outage hit services around the globe.
European and British regulators have been sounding the alarm. In July, the UK designated four technology companies — including Google Cloud EMEA Limited — as critical third-party suppliers for the financial sector, bringing them under direct regulatory oversight. EU regulators last year named Google Cloud among 19 technology firms designated as critical third-party computing providers on which the bloc's finance industry depends.
The London region itself has a troubled history. In July 2022, a power and cooling failure in europe-west2-a knocked Google Cloud services offline for 18 hours and 23 minutes, after traffic was inadvertently rerouted away from all three availability zones. In August 2024, a power fault affecting networking equipment caused around 40 minutes of connectivity problems.
Why resilience is harder than it looks
Cloud providers sell the promise that their architecture survives the failure of individual components — data is spread across multiple "availability zones" precisely so one zone's problems don't cascade. When an outage spills across a whole region anyway, it raises uncomfortable questions: about whether redundancy is configured correctly, whether customers understand the limits of what they've bought, and whether regulators can do anything meaningful about concentration risk.
The data-centre boom itself is under scrutiny: Finland recently halted work on a Google data centre, while communities from Batam to Essex are questioning the water and energy costs of the AI-driven build-out. The facilities keep multiplying even as opposition grows — yet Tuesday's lesson is that building more data centres doesn't automatically mean building more resilience.
For banks, the stakes are uniquely high. When a hospital's systems fail, it's a crisis; when the rails of the payments system fail, it is felt by every shopper at every checkout within minutes. The UK's Payment Systems Regulator and the Bank of England are likely to take a hard look at how many critical banking operations were funneled through a single cloud region.
What to watch next
Google Cloud has yet to say what caused the failure. The precise origin — hardware, software, power, networking — matters less than the structural question Tuesday exposed: how comfortable is a country with its money running on someone else's computers? Expect banks to face fresh pressure from regulators to prove they can keep payments flowing when their cloud provider cannot, and expect Google to face the same scrutiny that followed the CrowdStrike incident: not just "what broke," but "why did nothing else catch it?"
Frequently Asked Questions
What caused the Google Cloud outage?
Google Cloud has not disclosed a cause. Its status page reported that multiple services in the London-based europe-west2 region experienced "elevated errors and intermittent network failures" starting shortly after 6:08am GMT on Tuesday, and said its engineering team was investigating. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company apologized to those affected and promised updates.
Which services were affected?
Revolut was hit hardest — card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, currency exchange, stock trading and sign-ins were unavailable or partially unavailable. Lloyds, HSBC and Halifax reported problems with some online services. Non-bank firms including DPD, Rightmove, BT, Cloudflare and Royal Mail also saw disruption, though not all incidents have been confirmed as linked to the Google Cloud failure.
Was customers' money safe?
Yes. Revolut stated explicitly that "all our customers' money and data are safe." The disruption affected access to services, not the integrity of accounts or funds.
Has Google's London region failed before?
Yes. In July 2022, a power and cooling failure in the europe-west2-a zone caused an outage lasting 18 hours and 23 minutes. In August 2024, a power fault affecting networking equipment caused about 40 minutes of connectivity problems in the same region.
Why are regulators concerned about banks using the cloud?
European and British regulators worry that the financial sector's reliance on a small number of cloud providers creates concentration risk — a single failure can take down multiple banks at once. The UK has designated Google Cloud EMEA Limited and three other firms as critical third-party suppliers under direct regulatory oversight, and the EU has designated 19 critical technology providers for finance.
