A power-related fault that Google says disrupted parts of its cloud infrastructure at its London data centre also affected the financial sector, causing service interruptions for Revolut.
In Cyprus, where Revolut says it has around 450,000 users, customers reported difficulties from Tuesday morning, including an inability to access money-transfer services, problems using payment cards, rejected transactions and temporary loss of access to account services.
The disruption amounted to a significant blackout for Europe's largest fintech company and represented a blow to both its reputation and customer confidence.
The financial sector is particularly sensitive to any interruption affecting customers' access to their money, even when funds themselves are not at risk.
Revolut stated through social media updates that customer funds and personal data remained secure throughout the disruption.
Power fault in London
Google attributed the service interruption to an electrical incident at its European data centre in London.
According to the company, the fault affected the “europe-west2-b” infrastructure zone, resulting in high error rates and intermittent network outages.
The Google Cloud disruption caused problems for a range of businesses and financial institutions across the United Kingdom on 20 October, with both Revolut and Halifax among those affected.
Halifax, one of Britain's largest mortgage lenders, informed customers that its mobile application and online banking services were experiencing difficulties.
Its parent company, Lloyds Banking Group, said it was monitoring the situation.
Wider impact
The outage also affected the videoconferencing platform used by courts in England and Wales for remote hearings.
Problems were additionally reported across services operated by Royal Mail, parcel-delivery companies and other online platforms.
The Financial Times noted that the incident highlighted how a technical failure at a major cloud infrastructure provider can affect the daily activities of millions of users.
The disruption began at approximately 7am UK time.
Google apologised to affected users and initially said it expected part of the problem to be resolved during the early afternoon.
Reliance on third-party providers
The incident has also drawn attention to the risks associated with financial institutions' reliance on large external cloud-service providers.
While no customer funds were reported lost or compromised, the outage demonstrated how technical failures at a single technology provider can rapidly affect banking, payments, communications and public services simultaneously.
