A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London on Tuesday led to significant disruptions across several UK banks. Google confirmed that its Cloud services went down due to a “power event” and expected full recovery by 1pm GMT.
The outages affected the digital bank Revolut, disrupting ATM withdrawals, bank transfers, and card top-ups. A source close to the situation linked these issues directly to the Google Cloud failure. Major UK banks Lloyds and HSBC also acknowledged that their customers experienced problems with banking services.
The incident began at 6:08am GMT, with Google reporting “elevated errors and intermittent network failures” in the europe-west2 region, which pertains to the London facility.
Internet service tracker Downdetector noted that numerous other businesses, including the property site Rightmove and the Royal Mail, faced similar issues.
Lloyds stated it was aware that “some customers are having issues with our app and online banking,” while HSBC reported difficulties for customers accessing services, promising to monitor the situation further.
A spokesperson for Revolut expressed regret for the disruptions and assured customers that their money and data remained safe. The bank is actively working to resolve the problems.
