Google Cloud London Outage Disrupts Revolut Banking Services
Network failures in the europe-west2 region trigger widespread service interruptions for major digital banking platforms.
1London Region Service Disruption
On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, Google Cloud experienced significant network failures within its London-based europe-west2 data center. This infrastructure outage caused multiple cloud services to go offline, impacting various enterprise clients. The disruption was officially acknowledged via Google's status page, confirming that the technical issues were not limited to internal dashboards.
2Revolut Payment System Failure
Digital bank Revolut reported a widespread service outage affecting its mobile application and card payment processing across Europe. Customers were unable to perform ATM withdrawals or complete card transactions during the incident. A source familiar with the matter confirmed to Reuters that this failure was directly linked to the Google Cloud disruption.
3Data Security and Integrity
Revolut issued a public statement on X confirming that all customer funds and personal data remained secure despite the platform's unavailability. The bank apologized for the inconvenience while engineering teams worked to resolve the underlying technical issues. However, the company did not provide a specific cause for the service interruption at that time.
4ING Germany Technical Issues
Simultaneously, ING Germany reported problems with its online banking and mobile application access on the same morning. While the timing coincided with the Google Cloud outage, Reuters did not explicitly link the two events. ING has not yet provided a detailed explanation regarding the specific cause of their own service connectivity issues.
5Cloud Dependency Risks
The simultaneous disruption of multiple financial services highlights the systemic risk associated with relying on a limited number of cloud providers. Because Revolut operates entirely as an app without physical branches, the outage rendered the bank effectively inaccessible. This event underscores the fragility of modern fintech infrastructure when centralized data centers experience failures.
6Impact on European Fintech
The europe-west2 region serves as a critical backbone for numerous UK and European fintech companies. With Revolut alone serving tens of millions of customers, the scale of impact is substantial. When a primary data center goes down, the resulting service unavailability prevents users from accessing essential financial tools before the root cause is identified.
7Communication During Incidents
Alphabet did not immediately respond to requests for further information regarding the outage, a common occurrence during active technical incidents. While companies often prioritize reassuring users about data safety, these statements do not address immediate functional needs. Customers remain uncertain about service restoration timelines until official updates are provided by the cloud provider.
8Future Infrastructure Resilience
This incident serves as a case study for the necessity of robust disaster recovery protocols in digital banking. As financial institutions deepen their reliance on hyperscale cloud infrastructure, the ability to maintain operations during regional outages becomes a competitive necessity. Future evaluations will likely focus on multi-cloud strategies to mitigate these centralized failure points.
Original article: Security Affairs — Google Cloud London Outage Disrupts Revolut Banking Services