Bank Account in a Dead Zone: How a Google Outage Brought Banks Across Europe to a Standstill

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A disruption at a data centre thousands of kilometres away, and suddenly you can no longer access your own money. What sounds like science fiction happened on 20 October 2026. The consequences show just how dependent the digital financial world has become on a handful of major corporations.

The Tuesday That Left Bank Customers Holding Their Breath

On Tuesday, part of Google Cloud’s infrastructure in London went down, specifically the europe-west2 region. Digital bank Revolut reported disruptions affecting payments and access to its app. Users in several European countries also reported problems. ING experienced difficulties as well, although it stated that these were unrelated to the Google incident. At the height of the outage, Google listed 36 affected services, including computing, databases and storage. Over the course of the day, the company reported that the services had been restored.

Why Your Bank Account Depends on the Cloud

Banks rarely operate all their software entirely within their own data centres. Instead, they rent computing capacity from cloud providers because this is more cost-effective and flexible. Logging in, checking account balances and making transfers: much of this now runs on infrastructure controlled by third parties. If that infrastructure fails, the bank comes to a standstill, even when it has done nothing wrong. That is precisely what makes this incident so concerning.

The Cause: Power, Not Hackers

According to Google, the problems were linked to the power supply. The company did not identify a cyberattack as the cause. At the time of reporting, it was not yet fully clear exactly how the outage unfolded or what economic impact it would have.

Who Is Liable When the Cloud Goes Down?

For some time, the EU has required banks to assess their dependence on IT service providers and maintain contingency plans. For customers, one question matters above all in practice: are alternative channels available in the event of an outage, do payment cards continue to work, and is clear information provided? Anyone who has suffered specific financial damage as a result of such a disruption should have their claims assessed on a case-by-case basis.

The Cloud Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Cable

The real problem is not a single outage. It is the ease with which entire industries have come to rely on a small number of providers. A power issue in London can bring payment services to a halt in Berlin, Vienna or Madrid. This is not a footnote. It is a systemic risk.

The Bank Must Be in the Driver’s Seat, Not Just the Passenger Seat

It is deeply unacceptable for banks to market themselves on security and trust while tying their customers to the power supply of a service provider they do not control. A contingency plan that exists only on paper is not a strategy. It is decoration. The rules demand more, and that is precisely what banks should be judged on before the next outage turns their current accounts into reminders of what they can no longer access. Anyone entrusted with safeguarding people’s money must not simply hope that the cloud holds. Customers are entitled to expect the rain to have been planned for in advance.