Google Cloud London outage: what home banking and app users should do

If your banking app stalled on the morning of Tuesday, October 20, 2026 in the UK or Ireland, you were not alone. Google Cloud’s public incident page reported a multi-service disruption in its London region (europe-west2), and later said a power event caused an outage in zone europe-west2-b.

This is not a “patch your laptop” story. You cannot fix Google’s data center from Settings. You can still avoid making a bad outage worse: do not hammer login buttons, do not fall for fake “restore your account” texts, and keep a backup way to pay for groceries while the app is red.

What Google Cloud said

From Google Cloud’s incident updates (times on the dashboard are US/Pacific):

• The incident began Monday, October 19, 2026 at 23:08 PDT.
• Multiple Google Cloud services in europe-west2 saw elevated errors and intermittent network failures.
• A later update said a power event caused an outage inside zone europe-west2-b, where Google Cloud services were unavailable, while some services elsewhere in the region saw elevated errors and intermittent network issues.
• Google said the power event was mitigated, that services were recovering, and that existing workloads were the recovery priority. Creating new workloads might still fail during recovery.
• Google tentatively pointed at Tuesday, October 20, 2026 around 06:00 PDT for full recovery of existing workloads.
• By 05:10 PDT (1:10 p.m. in London), Google said it was seeing services recover for most workloads in europe-west2, with the next update promised by 07:00 PDT.
• An earlier note said Looker Studio was not impacted.

Google’s own posts list the affected Google Cloud products. They do not name any customer apps.

The live status board is the source of truth while the incident is open: status.cloud.google.com and the incident detail page.

What showed up for ordinary people

Reporting from the BBC and RTÉ described trouble with everyday apps the same morning. Keep the wording careful here: the BBC said the link between these app problems and the Google Cloud outage had not been officially confirmed, and that few companies had explicitly tied their problems to it.

• Revolut confirmed a service disruption affecting multiple services. RTÉ reported it flagged issues with card payments, transfers, cash withdrawals, and signing in. Revolut said customers’ money and data are safe, and told the BBC the problems were caused by a third-party issue. RTÉ reported the issue is understood to be linked to the Google Cloud incident.
• Lloyds Banking Group brands (Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland) were also having some problems, according to the BBC. A Lloyds spokesperson said its app was functioning normally but that some customers were having issues with certain online services.
• The BBC also reported that HM Courts and Tribunals Service was aware of an issue with its remote hearings video platform, and that delivery firm DPD flagged connection issues. Neither was confirmed as linked to Google Cloud.

Not every outage on Downdetector is automatically Google Cloud. Prefer each company’s own status page plus Google’s incident post.

If you are outside the UK and your apps were fine, this may still be useful context: one regional cloud zone can take down apps that feel “always on.”

What to do on your phone or computer

1. Check the company’s own status page or app notices first. For Google Cloud itself, use the incident link above. Social media screenshots age badly during outages.
2. Try one clean relaunch. Force-quit the app, toggle airplane mode once, reopen. Do not spam the login button fifty times. That just adds load and can trip fraud alarms later.
3. Use a backup payment method for essential purchases. Carry a physical card from a different bank, or enough cash for the day, while a fintech app is partially unavailable. RTÉ reported that some supermarkets in Ireland were warning shoppers they might be unable to pay with Revolut.
4. Do not “fix” the outage with random APKs, sideloaded helpers, or links from texts and DMs. Outages are peak season for phishing that pretends to restore access.
5. Keep ordinary device updates separate. Installing a Chrome or Edge security update is still good hygiene this week (Chrome 155.0.8059.84, Edge 155.0.4283.62). It will not fix an app whose servers are having trouble.
6. If a payment failed mid-checkout, wait and verify. Check the merchant receipt and your bank or Revolut history once service returns before you tap pay again. Double charges are more annoying than waiting ten minutes.

Do this / don’t do that

Do

• Bookmark Google’s incident page and your bank’s status page for the rest of the day.
• Have a second way to pay for food, transit, and fuel before you need it.
• Assume customer money is still at the bank when the bank says so, then verify balances after recovery instead of panicking in the checkout line.

Don’t

• Do not trust unsolicited “we locked your Revolut, verify now” messages during the outage window.
• Do not treat every Downdetector spike as confirmed Google Cloud without the vendor saying so.
• Do not factory-reset your phone because an app timed out.
• Do not change your DNS or VPN settings to “fix” a regional cloud power event. That is not a home router problem.

Bottom line

On October 20, 2026, Google Cloud reported a power event outage in europe-west2-b (London) that disrupted multiple cloud services in the region, with most workloads recovering by midday London time (Google Cloud incident). Revolut and some UK banks reported app problems the same morning. Revolut blamed a third-party issue and said customer money and data are safe, though the BBC noted the link to Google Cloud had not been officially confirmed (BBC, RTÉ). On your side: check status pages, avoid phishing, use a backup payment method, and wait for recovery. You cannot patch a cloud zone from your phone. You can refuse to make the day worse.

Image: Google data center server aisle photo (datacenters.google).