Six-hour, 10-minute cloud outage disrupted UK banking services
Key Facts
An outage in Google Cloud’s London europe-west2 region on October 20, 2026, disrupted banking services in Britain after starting at 07:00 UK time and lasting 6 hours and 10 minutes, according to Google’s preliminary report. The banks that reported disruptions included Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC and Revolut, the Associated Press reported. Reuters said millions of customers were unable to access essential financial services for hours. The incident was concentrated in one availability zone, but Google said its effects extended to some workloads in other zones of the region. The outage highlights the reliance of multiple financial institutions on shared cloud infrastructure, while financial firms remain responsible for managing their suppliers’ risks.
Google attributed the preliminary cause to a power failure at a data center facility hosting the europe-west2-b availability zone. The outage temporarily took servers, network routing equipment and storage systems offline, according to the company’s incident log. Google said multiple services in europe-west2 saw higher error rates, API outages and processing delays. The impact also extended to some workloads in other zones of the region, widening the disruption beyond the facility where the problem began. The company described the incident as service disruptions involving errors and delays, while bank reports documented its effect on customers’ access to banking services.
The outage affected everyday banking functions, with Reuters reporting that impacted Revolut services included logins, card payments and cash withdrawals. The company has about 13 million customers in the UK, according to the report. Disruptions reported by other banks included Lloyds, Halifax and HSBC, the Associated Press reported. The agency said some service apps outside Britain were also affected because they relied on infrastructure in London. Revolut said customers’ money and data remained safe, adding: "We confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe." It also said it was working to resolve the problem and apologized to those affected.
Google said recovery had covered the vast majority of virtual machines by 13:10 UK time on October 20, when more than 99% of Compute Engine machines were healthy. But the company did not publish an incident closure notice until 15:03 the same day. The gap between most machines returning to a healthy state and the closure notice reflects two separate stages in Google’s incident updates. The outage recorded in the preliminary report lasted 6 hours and 10 minutes, from its start at 07:00 until its end at 13:10. The company said it would publish a final report, including preventive measures, after completing its investigation.
Regulators have been monitoring the incident’s effects on financial institutions. The European Financial Services Authority said it had contacted Google Cloud for further information and to assess the potential impact on financial institutions in the European Union. The UK Financial Conduct Authority said it was in contact with Google about the incident, noting that providers designated under the critical third parties regime are required to report serious outages to the FCA and the Bank of England. Parliament’s Treasury Committee wrote to the Bank of England and the FCA seeking details about their response, the scale of the disruption and any resulting financial harm. The available facts did not include an estimate of realized financial damage.
The scrutiny comes amid UK rules that give regulators oversight of critical services technology providers supply to the financial sector, while financial institutions themselves remain responsible for managing supplier risks, according to the Treasury. The Treasury said an outage at a major provider could affect multiple financial firms at the same time. At the European Union level, Reuters reported that 19 technology companies had been designated the previous year as critical providers to the financial sector and placed under joint direct oversight by three regulators. EL7 covered in July Britain’s tougher oversight of major cloud computing providers as critical financial infrastructure. Relevant parties are now awaiting Google’s final report, which the company said it would publish after completing its investigation, including preventive measures.