On October 20, 2026, an outage in Google Cloud’s London region disrupted multiple digital services. Revolut reported problems affecting card payments, transfers and cash withdrawals, while other UK banks and services also experienced issues. Google attributed the incident to a power event at one of its London infrastructure zones.
The outage was not described as a cyberattack. Revolut said customers’ money and data were safe. For small businesses, the incident is a reminder that an essential service can depend on infrastructure and providers that are easy to overlook. Preparing a fallback and testing recovery procedures can limit the impact of an outage.
What happened on October 20
Google reported an incident in its London europe-west2 region. It began at 06:08 GMT on October 20 and affected many products, including Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud Run and several networking services. Google later said a power event had caused an outage in the europe-west2-b zone, with intermittent errors and network failures across the region. The company said the incident had been mitigated for most customers while it continued to restore a small number of workloads.
Revolut reported disruption to multiple services. Reuters, citing a person familiar with the matter, linked its outage to the Google Cloud incident. Revolut’s status page listed problems with card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals and access to some services. Lloyds, Halifax and HSBC also reported issues. These reports describe a regional incident affecting several organisations; they do not establish that every customer or service at those companies experienced the same impact.
A service outage, not a data breach
Google’s published updates describe a power event and network errors, not unauthorised access to data. Revolut said customers’ money and data were safe. The sources reviewed do not report a data breach or theft of funds caused by this incident.
That distinction matters when customers and businesses assess what happened. An outage can block a legitimate transaction without compromising an account. It can also reveal a continuity weakness without exposing a security flaw. Without evidence to the contrary, describe this as service unavailability rather than a confidentiality incident.
The risk behind the outage: dependencies that are easy to miss
A business may use an application without knowing which services support it: hosting, networking, identity, payments, email or customer support. If a critical dependency becomes unavailable, the impact can spread to business operations even when the company’s own devices and premises are working normally.
The Google Cloud outage shows why these dependencies matter, but it does not prove that every affected company hosted all its systems in London. A small business does not need to copy a bank’s architecture or automatically adopt multiple cloud providers. It needs to know which activities stop when an external service fails, how long they can wait and which fallback options are ready to use.
Five checks for a small business
Start by listing the activities that must remain possible: taking payments, communicating with customers, accessing accounting or contacting a supplier. For each one, record the application, its providers, the person responsible and the channel to check its status.
Then verify fallback options with the people responsible for operations: another payment method that is already enabled, an offline order process, a support number or an alternative sign-in method. An option that has never been tested, requires an unavailable account or has no documented steps is not an operational plan.
Finally, run a short exercise. Simulate a critical service being unavailable for half a day without changing production systems. Check who makes the decision, how to inform staff and customers, what work can wait and how to reconcile transactions after service returns. The Soclyde small-business resilience article offers a simple exercise to get started.
How Soclyde fits
Soclyde manages passwords and access; it does not provide availability for Google Cloud, Revolut or a company’s payment services. Its encrypted vault stays on authorised devices and can be accessed offline from an available device. This can help a team find some credentials it needs for its work, but it cannot restore an external service during an outage or replace a continuity plan.
Resilience combines several measures: knowing which providers matter, controlling emergency access, documenting procedures and testing backups or alternative methods when the business depends on them. Access management is only one part of that preparation.
What to remember
The October 20 outage showed that an incident in one cloud region can disrupt banking and digital services people use every day. The available evidence points to a power event at Google Cloud; it does not show a data breach or loss of Revolut customer funds.
For a small business, the practical lesson is to identify dependencies that could stop work, prepare suitable fallbacks and test them before the next disruption. Start with the small-business resilience article.
