A 'power event' at Google Cloud just knocked UK banking apps offline

A 'power event' at Google Cloud's London region knocked out a swath of UK banking apps on Tuesday, including Revolut, Halifax, and Emma. Google's status dashboard said the europe-west2 region, based in London, was experiencing service issues, and as of 12:12 p.m. local time, cloud services were listed as 'unavailable.' The company said the cause was a power event that has since been 'mitigated,' but the disruption had already rippled through the financial services sector. The outage began around 7 a.m., according to Emma, and affected a range of services that rely on Google's cloud infrastructure.

Revolut, the digital bank with millions of UK customers, said in a statement that 'all our customers' money and data are safe' and that it had been 'working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning.' Halifax, one of the UK's largest banks, apologized on X: 'We're aware some customers are having issues with our app and online. We're sorry about this and are working hard to fix it.' Emma, a popular budgeting app, said it was 'currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am,' adding that it was 'a technical outage, not a security issue.' A person familiar with the matter said the outage was due to Google Cloud, and a Google spokesperson said the company was investigating and referred to the status dashboard.

The outage is a stark reminder of how much of the modern financial system now runs on a handful of cloud providers. Google Cloud competes head-to-head with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure for enterprise, startup, and government contracts, particularly as the AI boom drives demand for compute power. Reliability is the core promise in these deals, and outages can have costly consequences for customers. Google is not alone in this: Amazon, Microsoft, and others have suffered downtime this year, underscoring that no hyperscaler is immune. For banks and fintechs, the cost of downtime goes beyond lost transactions; it can include regulatory penalties, reputational damage, and customer churn.

The impact extended well beyond banking. Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions, showed non-finance companies also affected. DPD, the delivery service, said its website was affected, and web-hosting platform SiteGround said the outage had hit its UK data center, with engineers working alongside Google Cloud engineers to resolve the issue. The UK's courts and tribunal service reported problems with its cloud-based video tools for remote hearings, saying it was 'working with our technology partners to restore service.' This cross-sector impact shows how deeply embedded Google Cloud has become in the UK's digital infrastructure.

For users, the failure was more than an inconvenience. Social media posts described being unable to make card payments, log in to apps, or transfer money. One person said they had to cancel beauty appointments in Japan; another said their card was declined at the airport and they could not reach the support team. These stories illustrate the real-world stakes when critical infrastructure goes down, even for a few hours. The outage also hit at a time when many people rely on mobile banking for daily financial management, making the disruption particularly acute.

For executives and boards, the incident is a fresh case study in concentration risk. Many fintechs and enterprises run on a single cloud region or even a single provider, often for cost and simplicity. But a regional outage like this one can freeze customer-facing services, trigger regulatory scrutiny, and erode trust. UK financial regulators have increasingly emphasized operational resilience, and this event will likely sharpen that focus. The fact that the outage was contained to one region, and that Google said it was mitigated, does not diminish the disruption caused in the interim. Companies must ask themselves: what happens if our primary cloud region goes dark for an hour, a day, or longer?

The response from affected companies was swift but reactive. Revolut, Halifax, and Emma all communicated publicly within hours, but the incident highlights the need for proactive contingency planning. For peers in similar roles, the takeaway is clear: audit your cloud dependencies, test failover mechanisms, and have a communication playbook ready before the next outage hits. The question is not whether another outage will occur, but when, and whether your organization will be ready. For cloud providers, the incident is a reminder that their reliability promises are under constant scrutiny, and that even a single-region power event can become a global headline.