Google Cloud outage in London hits banking apps and websites

Google Cloud services faced a major technical failure in London starting just after seven in the morning UK time. The disruption caused high error rates and network failures across multiple tools in the europe-west2 region, while other sites like Paris and Frankfurt remained unaffected. Financial services and online platforms suffered widespread downtime. Online bank Revolut reported problems with sign-ins, card payments, money transfers, ATM withdrawals, and crypto services, though the company confirmed that customer money and data are safe. Personal finance app Emma and satire website NewsThump also went offline due to the cloud failure. Reports on DownDetector showed spikes in user problems for HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group as well.

Ticketing and Workarounds

Hertfordshire football club Hitchin Town reported that its ticketing site went down because the platform relies on Google Cloud. Google advised affected customers to move their workloads to another available zone or region if possible. Google apologized for the issue and stated that engineers were working on a fix.

Context

Cloud computing outages can quickly knock out many different apps and websites at the same time because thousands of digital services rent their server infrastructure from a single major tech provider. Major tech companies typically maintain redundant server regions across different cities to help traffic get rerouted when an unexpected failure happens.