A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London, United Kingdom, disrupted banking services across the country on Tuesday, leaving customers of major financial institutions struggling to access some services, including ATM withdrawals and online banking.
Key Highlights
- A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London disrupted UK banking services on Tuesday.
- Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC customers reported problems with ATMs, transfers, apps and online banking.
- Rightmove and Royal Mail users also reported service interruptions.
- Google said the outage began at 0608 GMT in its europe-west2 region, with full restoration expected around 1300 GMT.
- Revolut says customers’ money and data are safe.
The disruption affected digital bank Revolut, as well as major UK lenders Lloyds and HSBC, while users of other businesses, including property website Rightmove and postal service Royal Mail, also reported service interruptions.
Google confirmed the incident in a service update, attributing the disruption to a power-related problem at its London data centre.
The technology giant said the outage began at 0608 GMT on Tuesday and affected multiple cloud services in its europe-west2 region.
“Multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in the europe-west2 region,” the company said in an earlier update.
Google subsequently said it expected services to be fully restored at around 1300 GMT on Tuesday.
Revolut, Lloyds, HSBC Customers Hit
The disruption affected several services provided by Revolut, including ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and bank card top-ups, according to a source familiar with the matter who linked the problems to the Google Cloud outage.
Lloyds also confirmed that some customers were experiencing difficulties accessing its application and online banking services.
“We are aware some customers are having issues with our app and online banking,” the bank said.
HSBC similarly acknowledged that customers were experiencing difficulties accessing its services, adding that the situation was also affecting other organisations.
The bank said it would continue monitoring the incident as efforts to restore normal operations continued.
Read also:
- MTN Nigeria Confirms Network Outage in Lagos, Oyo, Rivers, Delta, FCT
- Tinubu Backs Google Partnership Targeting One Million Digital Jobs in Nigeria
- Google Signs 20-Year Nuclear Power Deal With Constellation Energy, Shares Jump 13%
A Revolut spokesperson apologised to affected customers, saying the bank had been working to resolve the problem since it was identified.
“We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe,” the spokesperson added.
Internet service monitoring platform Downdetector recorded hundreds of reports of problems affecting several businesses during the incident.
The outage highlights the potential for disruptions at major cloud computing providers to affect multiple businesses that depend on their infrastructure to deliver digital services.
Google had yet to provide further details in the reported updates about the precise cause of the power incident or the full extent of its impact.
For more tech news and updates, follow us on X.
