Compiled from reports by The Paypers, ABC News and Dawn. See the original articles linked below.
A power failure affecting Google Cloud's London region on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, interrupted banking apps, court video platforms and other online services in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, according to reports from The Paypers, ABC News and Dawn.
What Google said
Dawn, citing the AFP news agency, reported that the problem was a power failure at a Google Cloud data centre near London, in Waltham Cross. It said the incident began at 0608 GMT and that Google stated most services were back to normal by 1210 GMT. ABC News said Google described the cause as a "power event" and that disruption was still being felt into the afternoon. According to ABC News, Google said the outage was largely resolved and that it would carry out an investigation and publish an analysis once that review was finished.
The Paypers, referring to Reuters reporting, said the affected area was Google's europe-west2 region, which mainly serves customers in the UK and Ireland, and that Google's engineers were investigating.
Banks and payment apps
The Paypers reported that Revolut's status page showed most of its services as unavailable or only partly available, including card payments and ATM withdrawals. Dawn said Revolut customers had trouble with cash withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups, and that a source linked those faults to the Google Cloud failure. Revolut said customers' money and data were safe, according to both outlets and ABC News.
The Paypers said Halifax reported problems online and in its app, while Lloyds Bank said its app was working but some online services were affected. Dawn reported that Lloyds and HSBC both confirmed customer issues, and that Lloyds said the underlying problems had been fixed and it expected services to return to normal soon. The Paypers added that ING in Germany said customers had difficulty logging into online banking and its app.
Courts and other services
ABC News reported that court live streams were disrupted, including coverage of the ongoing trial of comedian Russell Brand. It said the UK's Courts and Tribunals Service confirmed a fault with a video platform used for some remote hearings. ABC News also listed e-bike rental, budgeting apps, Royal Mail, Microsoft and DPD among services reportedly affected.
Dawn said Downdetector, the outage-tracking site, showed hundreds of reports of problems across UK businesses, naming Rightmove, DPD and Royal Mail. The Paypers noted that Downdetector figures for Lloyds, HSBC, Bank of Scotland, Rightmove, DPD, NHS England and Royal Mail were small and might not reflect the real impact, and that not every case had been tied to the Google Cloud incident.
Regulatory background
The Paypers also placed the outage in a regulatory setting. It said the UK designated four technology firms, including Google Cloud EMEA Limited, as critical third-party suppliers to its financial sector in July 2026, bringing them under direct oversight. It added that the European Union named Google Cloud among 19 critical third-party computing providers for its finance industry in November 2025.
Sources
- Google Cloud outage disrupts Revolut and UK banks (The Paypers, 2026-10-20)
- European banks, websites hit as Google Cloud data centre goes offline for hours (ABC News, 2026-10-20)
- Power outage hits Google Cloud services, disrupting UK banks (Dawn, 2026-10-21)
This article was compiled with AI assistance from the reports listed above and reviewed by GMA before publishing.