EU and UK regulators press Google after cloud outage halts bank services

what happened

European regulators are asking Google for answers after a Tuesday outage at its cloud platform left bank customers unable to use key services for several hours. The European Banking Authority says it is in touch with Google Cloud to gather facts about the incident and judge how far it reaches across EU financial firms, a watchdog spokesperson told Reuters. Google blamed a power failure at a third-party facility serving its europe-west2 region in London, and said services were restored.

Revolut, which has about 13 million UK users, saw login, card payment and cash withdrawal problems, according to its website. Lloyds and HSBC were also hit, though neither bank replied immediately to Reuters. Revolut said customer money and data stayed secure.

In Britain, lawmakers on the Treasury Committee have asked the Bank of England and the FCA for details on the response, the size of the disruption and any financial losses. The FCA says it is engaging with Google. Under the UK regime, designated cloud providers must report serious outages to both bodies.

why it matters

The incident is the first big test of new EU and UK rules meant to make tech suppliers, cloud firms included, more resilient, since the financial sector relies on them heavily. The EU named 19 tech firms as critical providers last year, and Britain four cloud providers, so a single supplier failure can hit many lenders at once. For markets, the episode raises questions about operational risk at banks and fintechs, not just Google's own shares.

market impact

Alphabet and UK/EU banks: regulatory scrutiny of cloud outages adds operational-risk pressure on the sector

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