Power Event Hits London Datacenter
Google Cloud Outage Disrupts European Digital Banking
- Major Google Cloud outage in London europe-west2 zone triggers digital banking disruptions
- Revolut, HSBC, Lloyds, and DPD experience payment and transaction system failures
- ISPAB confirms no operational impact or service downtime recorded across Bangladesh
A major network and cloud infrastructure outage at Google Cloud’s European operations has disrupted online banking, card processing, and digital logistics services across the United Kingdom and parts of continental Europe.
The technical failure originated at Google Cloud’s primary London datacenter facility on Tuesday (October 20, 2026). Official incident updates published on Google Cloud’s Service Health dashboard confirm that a unexpected "power event" within the 'europe-west2-b' zone caused severe disruptions across multiple core computing and database services. Google’s engineering teams initiated recovery protocols and issued an official apology, clarifying that existing workloads were prioritized for system restoration.
The sudden outage severely impacted British digital challenger bank Revolut. According to status trackers and user reports, core services including debit card payment processing, app logins, account transfers, and ATM withdrawals faced partial-to-total disruption. Acknowledging the issue via X (formerly Twitter), Revolut stated: "We are currently experiencing outages affecting multiple services. However, all customer funds and personal data remain fully secure."
Beyond Revolut, the cloud failure cascaded across major financial and logistics operators, including HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Emma app, the UK's court video system, Screwfix, and delivery firms DPD and Royal Mail. Additionally, Germany's ING Bank reported intermittent login and app authorization errors stemming from upstream connection failures.
Despite the widespread disruption in Europe, internet infrastructure in Bangladesh remained entirely unaffected. Confirming the local status, Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) General Secretary Nazmul Karim Bhuiyan stated: "Google Cloud services and domestic data routing across Bangladesh are functioning normally, with zero outage reports recorded."
Tech analysts and international media outlets, including The Independent, noted that this incident underscores the severe global reliance on a centralized cloud oligopoly. With Amazon Web Services (AWS) holding nearly 30% of the global cloud market, Microsoft Azure holding 20%, and Google Cloud securing 11%, critical financial and digital ecosystems remain highly vulnerable when single-point datacenter failures occur.
//DBTech/IH/SMP/MVNO//
