A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London disrupted services across the UK on Tuesday, affecting banks, businesses and other digital platforms. Google said the incident was caused by a power event at its cloud operations, with full recovery expected by around 1300 GMT.
The disruption began at 0608 GMT and affected Google Cloud services in the europe-west2 region, which is hosted in London. In an initial update, the company reported elevated error rates and intermittent network failures across multiple services as engineers worked to restore operations.
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Banking Services Hit By The Disruption
Revolut was among the most visibly affected companies, with customers reporting problems with ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups. A source close to the matter linked the issues to the Google Cloud outage.
Traditional banks also reported disruptions. Lloyds said some customers were experiencing problems with its app and online banking, while HSBC confirmed difficulties accessing its services. HSBC added that it was monitoring the situation and noted that other organisations were affected as well.
Disruption Spreads Beyond Finance
Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions, recorded hundreds of reports involving other businesses, including property website Rightmove and the Royal Mail postal service. The reports suggested that the outage was affecting multiple parts of the UK’s digital economy.
The incident highlights the risks facing businesses that depend on shared cloud infrastructure. Even a temporary failure at a single provider can disrupt services across several sectors, from banking and payments to logistics and consumer platforms.
Companies Reassure Customers
Revolut said it had been working to resolve the issue since it was identified and apologised to affected customers. The company also confirmed that customers’ money and data remained safe.
As cloud platforms underpin an increasing share of digital commerce, the outage illustrates how disruptions to critical infrastructure can spread far beyond the provider itself, affecting businesses and customers across the economy.
