Google has restored its UK cloud services following an hours-long outage that disrupted several financial institutions, businesses and public-sector websites. The incident has renewed concerns among UK and European Union regulators about the financial sector’s growing dependence on a small number of technology providers for critical services.
The disruption affected Revolut, with the digital bank reporting problems across multiple services. Its status page listed card payments and ATM withdrawals among the affected services. However, Revolut said customers’ money and data remained safe.
Google said its engineering teams had restored full service availability following a disruption caused by a “power event” in its europe-west2 cloud region. The region is based in London and comprises multiple data centres and availability zones that support customers across Europe.
The outage also affected services associated with Lloyds Bank, HSBC, property platform Rightmove, parcel delivery company DPD, NHS England and Royal Mail, according to reports on Downdetector. The platform tracks service disruptions using user reports and other sources, although the impact can vary among users.
Lloyds said it expected services to return to normal after the underlying issues were resolved. HSBC acknowledged that some customers were experiencing difficulties accessing its services.
Royal Mail confirmed it was aware of the disruption but said letter and parcel deliveries were unaffected. Rightmove, DPD and NHS England did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, ING Germany, which had earlier reported problems with its website and app, said there was no indication that the disruption resulted from an external cause or was connected to third-party service providers.
The incident has highlighted the risks associated with relying on a limited number of cloud infrastructure providers. In July, the UK brought Google Cloud, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Oracle under direct regulatory oversight as critical third-party suppliers to the financial sector. The move aimed to address the risk that an outage at a major technology provider could affect multiple financial institutions simultaneously.
Google Cloud was also among 19 technology companies designated by EU regulators last year as critical third-party computing providers serving the financial industry.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said the regulator was aware of the incident and was engaging with Google and affected firms to understand its impact.
Although services have been restored, the disruption has renewed questions about the resilience of cloud infrastructure supporting banking, payments and essential public services.
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