Breaking: Google Cloud Outage Stops Revolut Card Payments and Cash Withdrawals

📰 Quick News Brief

A fault at Google Cloud’s London data centre region has knocked out Revolut card payments, cash machine withdrawals, transfers and app sign-ins since just after 7am this morning. Down Detector has also logged spikes in problem reports for Lloyds, HSBC, Royal Mail, Rightmove, DPD and Screwfix, although none of those firms has confirmed a link. Home broadband and mobile networks are working normally. This is the failure nobody plans for: your phone works, your internet works, and you still can’t pay for anything. The only thing that works is the cash in your pocket.

🔝 Leading Story

London — Google Cloud Outage Stops Revolut Card Payments and Cash Machine Withdrawals

Status: Ongoing. Google says “multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures” in its London region, known as europe-west2. The fault began at 7:08am UK time, according to the Google Cloud status page, which lists close to 40 affected products, from its computing and database services to cloud storage and networking. The Register reports the problem sits in one of the region’s three data centre zones. Google says its engineers are still investigating, has given no cause and no time for a fix, and is telling affected businesses to move their systems to another location if they can.

Revolut has been hit hardest. Its status page showed most services unavailable or partly unavailable, including card payments, ATM withdrawals, bank transfers, sign-ins and customer support, Reuters reports. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the outage was related to the Google Cloud disruption. Revolut said: “We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe.” RTÉ reports Irish customers are affected too. The Emma budgeting app also went down and said the cause was the Google Cloud outage, not a security breach, TipRanks reports.

LBC reports that Lloyds customers have been complaining on social media that they can’t get into online banking, and that Down Detector also showed problems at HSBC, Screwfix, Rightmove and DPD. TechRadar said at 11:19am that reports for Revolut, Lloyds, Rightmove and DPD were starting to fall. None of those firms has said the Google fault was the cause, and it isn’t yet clear whether every problem reported today is linked.

If you bank with Revolut, your money is safe, but you may not be able to spend it or withdraw it until the fault is fixed. Use a card from a different bank if you have one, or pay with cash. Don’t try the same card over and over at a till or cash machine, and ignore any text, call or email offering to “fix” your account. Scammers move fast on outage days. See our Special Report “We Are One Button Away: How the UK’s Digital Dependency Became Its Greatest Vulnerability” first published on 4 July 2026.

💷 Why Cash Still Matters

Most of us now pay for everything by tapping a card or phone, and many people carry no cash at all. Today shows what that costs. When a bank’s systems fail, card payments stop, and a cash machine is no help, because it has to ask the same failed systems before it can hand over a single note. A working phone and a working internet connection change nothing. The bank’s computers are in a data centre somewhere else, and today one of them stopped.

Revolut customers this morning had money in their accounts and no way to use it: no card at the till, no cash from the machine, no transfer to a friend. Anyone with a tenner in their wallet could still buy lunch, fuel or a bus ticket.

• ☑️ Carry some cash every day. £20 to £40 covers food, a bus fare or a few litres of fuel when your card won’t work
• ☑️ Keep more at home, somewhere safe. Our Digital Dependency report suggests £100 to £300 for most households, enough for three to five days of essentials
• ☑️ Keep it in small notes and coins. Small notes are easier to spend when nobody else has change
• ☑️ Have a card from a second bank that runs on different systems. If your main bank is an app-only bank, make the backup a high street one, and the other way round
• ☑️ Keep your bank’s phone number written down, not just saved in the app you might not be able to open
• ☑️ Ignore anyone contacting you to “help” with the outage. Your bank will never ask for your PIN, passcode or a transfer to a “safe account”

UK Prepper Hub Tip of the Day

Put £20 in small notes in your wallet or phone case today, and leave it there. It isn’t for spending. It’s for the day the card machine says “declined” for no reason that’s your fault. Today, for Revolut customers, was that day.

This report is compiled using official UK government, emergency service, utility provider, and infrastructure operator updates, alongside reputable news agencies. All facts are checked to the best of our ability before publication.