Financial regulators in Europe are questioning Google after a Google Cloud outage on Tuesday left millions of bank customers without access to key financial services for hours, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The European Banking Authority (EBA) said it has been in contact with Google Cloud to obtain further information on the incident, understand its implications and assess its potential impact on financial entities in the EU, a spokesperson for the watchdog told Reuters. Alphabet's Google said the disruption was caused by a "power event" in a London-based network that serves customers across Europe.

Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC were among the banks affected, Reuters reported. At Revolut, which has around 13 million UK customers, logging in, card payments and cash withdrawals were all affected on Tuesday, according to the bank's website; Revolut said it was reviewing the incident to reduce the impact of future third-party disruptions and that customer funds and data remained safe throughout. A Google spokesperson told Reuters: "We have resolved a disruption to Google Cloud services at a third-party facility in our europe-west2 cloud region due to a power event. Services have been restored. We will update our public status dashboard with an analysis." Lloyds and HSBC did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Independent reporting of Google's incident record put the start of the outage at 06:08 GMT on Tuesday, with most workloads recovering by about 12:10 GMT — roughly six hours later — and 38 cloud services affected in the europe-west2-b zone, Analytics Insight and FinanceFeeds reported, citing Google's status updates. The disruption also produced outage reports at property site Rightmove, delivery firm DPD and Royal Mail, and disrupted a video system used for remote court hearings in England and Wales, those reports said.

The outage is the first major test of new rules designed to strengthen the resilience of the technology providers the financial sector depends on, Reuters reported. The EU last year designated 19 technology firms as critical third-party providers to the financial sector, bringing them under the joint direct oversight of three financial regulators including the EBA for the first time; Britain took similar steps for four cloud providers, and Google Cloud falls under both frameworks. In Britain, Parliament's Treasury Committee has written to the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) seeking details of the regulators' response, the scale of the disruption and any financial harm caused, Reuters reported. The FCA said it was engaging with Google over the incident; the Bank of England declined to comment. Under UK rules, designated providers must report serious outages to the FCA and the Bank of England, while banks remain ultimately responsible for the services they provide customers, Reuters said. Sources: Reuters, London/Paris (Oct 21, 2026); Analytics Insight reporting Google's incident record (Oct 21, 2026); FinanceFeeds (Oct 21, 2026).