Google Cloud outage disrupts fintech services, banking apps and court hearings

A disruption affecting Google Cloud’s London region has hit a range of online services, with fintech companies, banking customers and courts among those reporting problems.

Google said “multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region”, which corresponds to London. The company said it did not currently have a workaround.

The incident affects a broad range of cloud infrastructure, including Google Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, BigQuery Data Transfer Service and Google Cloud Pub/Sub. The breadth of services affected highlights the potential consequences when a major cloud provider experiences problems in a key regional hub.

The disruption has also affected remote court proceedings. HM Courts and Tribunals Service said it was aware of an issue affecting the Cloud Video Platform (CVP), used for remote hearings, adding: “we’re working with our technology partners to restore service”.

The Criminal Bar Association said the outage was preventing some prosecution and defence barristers from continuing with cases.

“Cloud Video Platform (CVP) is down across large parts of England and Wales since 10am,” it said. “Many of us today, both as prosecution and defence counsel, can not proceed with trials and other hearings.”

“Our work to clear backlogs is hampered,” the association added.

Businesses have also reported difficulties. Delivery company DPD said on its Irish X account: “We are aware of current connection issues affecting our website.”

“Our team is working to get this resolved as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Banks have reported mixed customer experiences. Lloyds told the BBC that its app was functioning normally, but said: “we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning”.

“We are aware of similar issues affecting other organisations and are monitoring the situation closely,” it added.

Halifax said it was “aware some customers are having issues” with its app and website, apologising and advising customers that they could still call if necessary. Neither bank confirmed that its reported problems were directly caused by Google’s incident.

Revolut earlier reported a “service disruption affecting multiple services”, with thousands of customers reporting problems.

The online bank said: “We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe.”

It added: “We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.”

The incident underlines how dependent businesses and public services have become on shared cloud infrastructure. Google had not announced a workaround at the time of its update, leaving affected organisations waiting for services to stabilise.