Explained: What's happening with Revolut?

Google said its cloud services are back up and running after an hours-long outage that disrupted several UK banks, including Revolut.

The fintech bank's 3.4 million customers based in Ireland have also been impacted by the problem.

And it has been a tough month or so for Revolut, with this latest issue coming on top of two recent high-profile data breaches affecting its customers.

But let's start with today.

What happened?

Google said this morning there was a "power event" in its 'europe-west2' cloud region - a London-based network of multiple data centres and availability zones that serves customers across Europe, including in Ireland.

Revolut (along with a host of other financial companies) uses Google Cloud services to support its platform, and as a result was impacted.

Google has since said the issue has been "mitigated for most of the customers and it is believed to be affecting currently a very small number of customers and our Engineering Team is working on it".

Most of Revolut's key services were disrupted by the problem, and some customers are still reporting having issues using the app.

What Revolut services are impacted?

For much of the day some Revolut customers have not been able to log in to the app, make card payments, transfer money or make ATM withdrawals.

Users also reported that the in-app support chat and messaging services weren't working.

As of 4pm, the Revolut status page was listing a total 31 services that were "partially unavailable".

Other affected services include topping up via bank card, currency exchange, stock trading and merchant payments.

Are customer funds and data safe?

In a statement to RTÉ News, Revolut said while "we are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services ... all our customers' money and data are safe".

The bank added it has been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning.

It also apologised to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.

When is the issue likely to be resolved?

Google says "a very small number of customers" are still impacted.

While this afternoon some Revolut customers reported they were still having issues with the app.

The fintech company said it would continue to provide updates on the situation, and so far has not confirmed that the issue has been resolved for its Irish customers.

Is it just Revolut affected?

It's not just Revolut.

Google Cloud provides services for a host of financial firms.

From this morning, the Downdetector website showed reports of issues affecting services including Lloyds Bank, HSBC, property website Rightmove, parcel delivery service DPD, as well as the UK's NHS and Royal Mail.

These outages were also linked to the Google Cloud issue and the situation puts the growing dependency on a small number of third-party tech providers that support critical financial services into sharp focus.

It also highlights how many consumers rely solely on fintech and digital banking.

Some Revolut customers took to social media across the day to explain how they couldn't buy their morning coffee, lunch, etc. due to not being able to make payments.

Many of them also said they didn't have any back-up option, such as cash or a bank card from a pillar bank.

Might this incident affect Revolut's reputation?

Up until recently Revolut was widely viewed as being a speedy, cheap, modern, reliable and secure alternative to the traditional banking and payments system.

But today's issue - given how high-profile it has been - will put a dent in that reputation.

It also comes off the back of two data breaches at the fintech company.

Just over a month ago, on 14 September, Revolut told some of its customers that copies of their passports and driving licences, along with their dates of birth, home addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, were handed to criminals.

The company has not said how many people were affected by the breach, or where they live.

Then 10 days later, Revolut customers in Ireland were informed they were among those impacted by a data breach at a third-party provider.

DriveWealth, a US broker that carries out US stock trades for Revolut customers, said a security incident affecting its systems involved unauthorised access to historical personal data of some DriveWealth customers.

DriveWealth said that the historical personal data that may be impacted includes customer profile data, such as name, email address, phone number, postal address and employment information.

Those two breaches, together with the problems customers are having today, mean Revolut will need to act quickly to reassure them that the service is as safe and reliable as it claims to be.

To a degree, consumers have increasingly started turning away from the traditional banks to fintechs like Revolut, which they perceive as being a cheaper and more flexible alternative.

But after today, that perception might start to shift somewhat - especially if people can't be sure they can reliably tap with their phone to pay for simple things like their morning coffee.