Google blames 'power event' for London cloud outage that hit Revolut, bank apps and UK court video hearings

A single power failure at one Google data center complex in London took a long list of British services offline Tuesday morning, from a digital bank with tens of millions of customers to the video links used for custody hearings.

Google's service health dashboard said multiple services in its europe-west2 region had "elevated errors and intermittent network failures," starting just after 7am local time. The company later said a "power event" caused an outage within the europe-west2-b zone. Google first flagged a problem in the region on Monday evening UK time, and the entry was updated in the early hours of Tuesday.

The company apologized "to all who are affected by the disruption." A Google spokesperson said it was investigating and pointed reporters to the dashboard. Its updates suggested customers move workloads to other regions "if feasible."

Revolut takes the biggest hit

Revolut was the most visible casualty. Downdetector logged more than 1,500 UK reports of problems by about 8:09am, according to The Mirror's tally of the site's data. Roughly 65 percent involved the app, about 20 percent involved access to funds, and 8 percent involved logins.

Revolut said sign-up, sign-in, card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, currency exchange and crypto services were affected. Users reported declined cards and failed logins. One said their card was declined at an airport and they couldn't reach support.

"We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services," Revolut said. "We can confirm that all our customers' money and data are safe." The company said it had been working on a fix since the problem was identified that morning.

A Revolut spokesperson told the BBC the cause was a third-party issue. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the outage was tied to Google Cloud. Revolut has not publicly named Google itself.

Revolut says it has more than 80 million retail customers, about 13 million of them in the UK. Complaints came from the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Japan. It is unclear whether every user was affected.

Other banks: a murkier picture

The link to Google is less clear for the high street banks. Halifax, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, said on X that some customers couldn't log in via the app and online. Bank of Scotland and Lloyds customers also reported problems.

Lloyds told reporters its app was working normally. "We understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning," a spokesperson said, adding that the bank was aware of "similar issues affecting other organisations."

HSBC said some customers were having difficulty accessing its services, and that the situation was "also affecting other organisations." Downdetector also showed user reports for Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland. None of these banks has named Google Cloud as the cause. Separately, ING Germany reported login problems it attributed to a technical issue.

The budgeting app Emma did name the cause. "Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am," it said, adding that it was "a technical outage, not a security issue." Web host SiteGround said its UK data center was hit and that its engineers were working with Google's. DPD said its website was affected. Rightmove and Royal Mail were also reported to be having problems.

Courts disrupted

HM Courts and Tribunals Service said the cloud-based video platform used for remote hearings was having problems. The system failed to work through the morning, according to The Guardian, and is often used for defendants in custody who need to attend court remotely. The paper reported that several hearings were believed to have been delayed.

The courts service said it was working with its technology partners on a fix.

Recovery and what comes next

The recovery picture was uneven. Google said services were starting to come back online at about 1pm London time. Earlier, around 12:12pm local time, its status page still listed cloud services in the region as "unavailable" even as the power problem was described as mitigated. Google has not given a final all-clear or an estimate of how many customers were affected.

The Financial Conduct Authority confirmed it was in touch with Google and seeking more information. The Guardian reported the incident is the first big test for the FCA and Bank of England since they were handed powers this summer to oversee major cloud providers that supply "critical" services to UK financial firms.

Outages also create openings for fraud. Karolis Kaciulis, lead system engineer at cybersecurity firm Surfshark, warned that scammers can send fake messages posing as affected banks and businesses. His advice: check updates through the company's official website or app, and never share passwords, payment details or verification codes through unsolicited links.

Google has not published a full explanation beyond the power event. What the FCA learns from the company, and whether Revolut and the banks say publicly which of their problems traced back to Google's London region, are still open.