Google Cloud Europe-West2 Outage Disrupts Revolut and UK Banking Services
A power event at a Google Cloud data center in the Europe-west2 region caused widespread outages for major financial institutions, including Revolut, HSBC, and Lloyds, on October 20, 2026. While Google resolved the core infrastructure issue by midday, lingering errors persisted for some banking customers into the afternoon. The incident highlighted the critical dependency of global financial systems on centralized cloud infrastructure, causing significant frustration for users unable to access funds or make transactions.
Key points
- Google Cloud reported issues in the Europe-west2 region starting at 23:08 PDT on October 19, 2026, which coincided with a power event at a London data center.
- Major UK and global banking institutions, including Revolut, HSBC, Halifax, and Lloyds, experienced service disruptions, preventing users from accessing funds or making card payments.
- Google stated that most issues were mitigated by 10:00 a.m. ET on October 20, but some banking institutions, such as Revolut and HSBC, continued to show errors on their status pages as late as 11:30 a.m. ET.
- Revolut assured customers that their data and funds remained safe despite the inability to process withdrawals or transfers during the outage.
- The incident affected not only financial services but also non-financial platforms like Rightmove and Royal Mail, underscoring the broad impact of cloud infrastructure failures.
Background
This outage follows a pattern of significant cloud infrastructure disruptions in 2026, including a Yandex outage in October 2026 caused by Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centers. Previous coverage from October 20, 2026, detailed the initial power event at the Google Cloud London data center, which began at 06:08 GMT and affected multiple UK financial institutions. The current update reflects the ongoing recovery phase, with some customers still experiencing residual issues despite Google’s declaration of mitigation.
Why it matters
The outage underscores the vulnerability of global financial systems to centralized cloud infrastructure failures. As banks and fintech companies increasingly rely on providers like Google Cloud for critical operations, any disruption can have immediate and widespread consequences for millions of users. The incident highlights the need for greater redundancy and resilience in cloud infrastructure to prevent such cascading failures in the future.
What to watch
Google’s engineering team continues to address lingering issues for a small number of customers. Banking institutions are expected to fully restore normal operations as the residual errors are resolved. The incident may prompt further scrutiny of cloud infrastructure reliability and the need for diversified infrastructure strategies among financial institutions.
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