Google Cloud Outage Disrupts UK Banks and Apps

A widespread outage affecting Google Cloud’s europe-west2 data centre has plunged hundreds of websites and apps into disarray across the UK and parts of Europe ^[1]. The disruption began around 07:00 BST on October 20, 2026, impacting services including Revolut, Lloyds Bank, HSBC, Halifax, Rightmove, Royal Mail, DPD, and Screwfix ^[2].

Google confirmed the issue on its Cloud Status page, stating it was experiencing problems with multiple services in the europe-west2 region ^[1]. The company said its engineering team was actively investigating, but offered no immediate workaround ^[2].

The outage has caused significant real-world disruption. Revolut reported a service disruption affecting payments and app access, though it confirmed customers’ money and data remained safe ^[1]. Similarly, banking apps from Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, and HSBC faced connection issues, with users unable to complete transactions ^[3].

DownDetector, a service that tracks outages, logged thousands of reports from users across the UK, indicating the scale of the failure ^[3]. Experts note that such incidents are becoming increasingly common as the internet relies heavily on a small number of cloud providers like Google, Amazon Web Services, and Cloudflare ^[2]. A failure at any one of these can cascade across seemingly unrelated services.

While Google has not confirmed the full extent of the outage’s geographic reach, reports suggest it may be affecting parts of Europe beyond the UK ^[3]. The incident underscores the fragility of digital infrastructure, where a single point of failure can bring down vital services ^[2].

What happens next remains unclear. Google has not announced a timeline for resolution, and users are advised to monitor official channels for updates.