Google Cloud Outage Disrupts UK Banks, Online Banking and Postal Services

A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London disrupted banking services and several online platforms across the United Kingdom on Tuesday, leaving customers of major lenders and businesses struggling to access essential services.

The outage affected services provided by Lloyds Bank, HSBC and digital bank Revolut, as well as property website Rightmove and postal service Royal Mail.

Google confirmed the incident in a service update, attributing the disruption to a power-related event at its London data centre.

The technology company said the incident began at 0608 GMT, with multiple services experiencing elevated error rates and intermittent network failures in its europe-west2 region.

Google initially projected that full recovery would be achieved around 1300 GMT on Tuesday.

The disruption affected several banking operations, including access to mobile applications, online banking, ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups.

Lloyds Bank acknowledged the problem, saying some customers were experiencing difficulties using its application and online banking services.

HSBC also confirmed that customers were having trouble accessing its services, adding that it was monitoring the situation because other organisations were experiencing similar disruptions.

Revolut said it had been working to resolve the issue since it was identified and apologised to customers for the inconvenience.

The digital bank, however, reassured customers that their funds and personal information remained safe.

“We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe,” a Revolut spokesperson said.

Reports compiled by internet service tracker Downdetector showed hundreds of complaints relating to the affected banks and other businesses, including Rightmove and Royal Mail.

The incident highlights the dependence of financial institutions and other essential service providers on cloud computing infrastructure, where failures at a single provider can affect multiple organisations simultaneously.

Google Cloud provides computing, storage, networking and other digital infrastructure services to businesses and organisations worldwide.

As businesses increasingly rely on cloud platforms to deliver critical services, disruptions can have widespread consequences for customers, even when the affected companies operate independently.

Google had not provided further details in the report on the precise cause of the power event or the full extent of its impact.