Digital bank Revolut and several major U.K. institutions suffered widespread service disruptions on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, following a severe technical outage at a Google Cloud data center in London.
Millions of customers woke up to digital frustration as online banking applications, parcel tracking systems, and property portals froze. The disruption began early Tuesday morning when Google Cloud encountered significant failures in its europe-west-2-b availability zone located in London.
We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience…
Revolut Users Face Card Declines and Locked Accounts Across Europe
For fintech giant Revolut, the morning outage was immediate and severe. Account holders across the U.K., Ireland, France, Spain, and other regions reported receiving error messages when attempting to open their apps, while others found their physical cards rejected at point-of-sale terminals. Among its massive user base, the online bank serves over 80 million personal customers globally alongside more than 800,000 corporate clients using Revolut Business.
According to telemetry data, roughly 63 per cent of reported problems related directly to app functionality, while 20 per cent involved money transfers and 8 per cent concerned login failures. Stranded shoppers in cities like Madrid and Barcelona had to abandon grocery purchases or scramble for alternative payment methods.
Despite the widespread system failure, company representatives quickly moved to calm jittery users, with a Revolut Bank spokesperson confirming that all client financial assets and personal records remained secure.
We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.
Revolut spokesperson, via Rte
Google Cloud Outage Cascades Across London Data Center Region
The root cause traced back to infrastructure operated by Alphabet’s Google Cloud. The tech giant confirmed that its London-based europe-west2 region was suffering from elevated error rates and intermittent network failures starting just after 6 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, October 20, impacting 36 distinct cloud products including Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, and Cloud Storage. The technical glitch also affected BigQuery Data TransferService, Cloud Filestore, Cloud Run, Google App Engine, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, and Managed Service for Apache Kafka.
Tech workers on Reddit and other platforms noted that single-zone failures predictably brought down applications that lacked high-availability redundancy. When asked by frustrated clients about immediate fixes, Google offered stark guidance: If feasible, the impacted customer may try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location,
noting that no direct workaround existed for the core London infrastructure.
Google Cloud Outage Disrupts Multiple Financial and Delivery Services
Revolut was far from alone in the digital gridlock. Tracking platform Downdetector recorded sharp spikes in complaints across a diverse range of public-facing services and financial institutions on Tuesday.
Budgeting app Emma took to social media to clarify its operational status, telling customers that Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am. This is a technical outage, not a security issue.
Halifax, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, likewise confirmed that some users faced online banking hurdles, while services for HSBC, Royal Mail, delivery firm DPD, and property platform Rightmove also experienced technical setbacks.
Financial Regulators Scrutinize Cloud Reliance
Tuesday’s infrastructure failure highlights a growing vulnerability that has alarmed European regulators for years: the financial sector's deep reliance on a handful of external technology providers.
Authorities have pushed to bring these foundational platforms under direct oversight. In July, the U.K. designated four tech companies—including Google Cloud EMEA Limited—as critical third-party suppliers for its financial sector. The European Union similarly named 19 technology companies as critical third-party computing providers supporting the bloc’s finance industry.
As engineering teams continued working to restore full network operations in London, neither Google nor Revolut provided a definitive timeline for when all services would return to normal.
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