Key facts
- European regulators are questioning Google over a cloud outage that affected banks.
- The European Banking Authority is seeking further information from Google Cloud.
- The outage was caused by a power event at a Google Cloud facility in London.
- Revolut, Lloyds, and HSBC were among the affected banks.
- The incident is the first major test of new EU rules for critical third-party technology providers.
European financial regulators are investigating a significant Google Cloud outage that disrupted services for millions of bank customers across the continent on Tuesday. The European Banking Authority (EBA) has initiated contact with Google Cloud to gather details about the incident, understand its implications, and assess its potential impact on financial entities within the EU. The disruption, which lasted several hours, was attributed by Google to a power event at a third-party facility in its London-based network. Among the affected institutions were Revolut, with approximately 13 million UK customers, as well as Lloyds and HSBC. Revolut confirmed that services such as logging in, card payments, and cash withdrawals were impacted, though it assured customers that their funds and data remained secure. This event marks a critical early test for new European regulations designed to enhance the resilience of technology providers upon which the financial sector relies. Britain has implemented similar oversight for critical cloud providers.