A power outage at Google Cloud’s London data center disrupted UK banking services on Tuesday, October 20, affecting Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC. The incident began at 06:08 GMT and interrupted digital banking operations, including money transfers, ATM withdrawals and card top-ups. Google attributed the disruption to a 'power event' affecting its London cloud infrastructure.
The outage affected Google Cloud workloads in its Europe-west2 region, creating problems for banks and other businesses that depend on its services. Google reported that most services had recovered by 12:10 GMT, around six hours after the incident began. However, the disruption highlighted how infrastructure failures at a major cloud provider can affect essential financial services.
Banking Services Face Disruptions
Revolut customers experienced problems with ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups during the incident. A source close to the matter linked the bank’s service interruptions to Google Cloud’s failures. Revolut said it was working to resolve the issue and apologized to affected customers.
The company also reassured customers that their money and personal data remained safe. Lloyds and HSBC confirmed service difficulties, with Lloyds saying it expected normal operations to resume after the underlying problems were resolved. HSBC said it would continue monitoring the situation as other organizations faced similar disruptions.
Wider Impact Raises Cloud Reliability Concerns
The outage extended beyond banking, with reports of problems affecting services such as property platform Rightmove, delivery company DPD and Royal Mail. Other reports also highlighted disruption to public services and court systems, demonstrating the wider impact of cloud infrastructure failures.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that heavy reliance on a small number of cloud providers creates risks for businesses and public services. Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services dominate large-scale cloud infrastructure in the UK. University of Surrey professor Alan Woodward warned that localized infrastructure failures can trigger wider problems when organizations depend on a limited number of providers.
Google said it would publish a detailed incident report in the coming days. The outage renews questions about backup systems and geographic redundancy for services that depend on cloud infrastructure.
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