Revolut restores services after app outage linked to Google Cloud disruption
Revolut said its app, card payments, transfers and ATM withdrawals were restored after a Google Cloud incident disrupted multiple services.
By Ingrid Halvorsen · Venture Capital Reporter
· 2 min read
Revolut restored services after a Revolut app outage on 20 October disrupted sign-ins, card payments, transfers and cash withdrawals. The company attributed the temporary disruption to a Google Cloud outage, while Google confirmed a power event had affected one zone in its London cloud region.
The fintech said the incident affected both new and existing customers. Functions reported as disrupted included sign-up, sign-in, card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals and cryptocurrency services, according to The Guardian. Revolut later said the issue had been fixed and its services were back online.
Revolut said customers' money and data remained safe during the incident. That was the company's assurance, rather than an independently verified assessment. The supplied Revolut updates did not state how many customers were affected, how many transactions failed or the duration of the company's disruption.
What caused the Revolut app outage?
Google's incident record says a power event caused an outage in the europe-west2-b zone, part of its London europe-west2 region. The cloud provider recorded unavailable services in that zone and elevated errors and intermittent network problems elsewhere in the region. Google said the issue had been mitigated for most customers, while a small number could still be affected, and said it would publish an analysis after completing its internal investigation.
Revolut connected its own outage to the Google Cloud event in a post reported by The Independent. The evidence establishes that both incidents occurred during the same disruption and that Revolut made that attribution. It does not establish the specific technical path from the Google fault to Revolut's services.
Google's and Revolut's published statements did not provide a final technical explanation specific to Revolut. Google said most affected cloud workloads had begun recovering during the incident.
Which other services were affected?
The cloud failure reached beyond Revolut. The Guardian reported disruption at Lloyds and HSBC, while the video system used for remote attendance at court hearings in England and Wales failed during the morning. The Financial Conduct Authority said it was engaging with Google and affected firms to assess the impact.
By later on 20 October, Revolut's US status page listed all systems as operational, including sign-up, sign-in, card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals and cryptocurrency. Revolut's restoration notice followed a day in which customers could not reliably access accounts or make payments, illustrating how a cloud-region failure can interrupt customer-facing financial services alongside the applications that run them.
Third-party outage trackers also logged user reports involving the app, transfers and mobile banking. Those reports can signal a problem but do not independently establish its cause, scope or the status of every service.
This story draws on original reporting from Sifted.
