Revolut outage froze cards at the till: what to do next time

The Revolut outage started early on Tuesday, October 20, with outage tracker Downdetector showing a spike in reports between 7am and 8am UK time. More than 1,500 people had reported problems shortly after 8am, and that number passed 2,000 by 9am.

Most complaints were about the app itself. About 63% of the reports concerned the app, 20% concerned transfers and 8% concerned logging in. People said they saw an error message telling them something went wrong and to try again later.

The bigger shock was at the till. Several customers said their cards were declined in stores, something that rarely happens during a bank’s app outage, because card payments usually run on separate systems. Some also said they couldn’t reach support through the in-app chat, which left them with no way to ask what was happening.

Reports came from the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Romania, with some users posting from as far away as Australia and Japan. Ireland was hit hard: Revolut says it has more than 3.4 million customers there.

Revolut confirmed the problem on its support account on X and in statements to reporters. “We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services,” a spokesperson said. The bank also stressed that nobody’s funds or personal data had been put at risk.

The company said it had been working on the fix since the problem was spotted that morning and apologized to anyone affected. It did not say what caused the failure or when everything would be back to normal.

There was some confusion along the way. Early in the morning, Revolut’s own status page still showed every system as operational. Later, the company’s website listed card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals and customer support as partially unavailable. That gap between what users were seeing and what the status page said added to the frustration on social media.

With a traditional bank, the app and the card network are often separate enough that one can fail while the other keeps working. Revolut started life as an app for cheap spending abroad and built much of its own technology, and its app, accounts and cards may lean on the same core systems. When those systems stumble, everything can stop at once.

That’s the trade-off with digital-first banks, often called neobanks. You get fast sign-up, low fees and slick features, but you rely heavily on one company’s software. Revolut only received its full UK banking license in March, and it has applied for a US bank charter, so it is still growing into the role of a main everyday bank for many people.

The same morning, Lloyds Bank customers reported trouble getting into their accounts. Almost 500 Lloyds reports had been logged on Downdetector by 9:27am, with nearly 40% of them about logging in. Lloyds had not issued a statement at that point.

More than 240 HSBC reports had appeared by 9:42am, and Bank of Scotland, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group, was close to 150 by 9:48am. There is no sign the problems were linked, and when one big bank goes down, customers of others sometimes report issues out of caution. Still, it was a rough morning for anyone who relies on a banking app.

The lesson from Tuesday is simple: don’t let a single app be your only way to pay. Even if your money is safe, it’s no help if you can’t reach it while you’re standing at a gas pump or a ticket barrier.

• Carry a backup card from a different bank. A second debit or credit card from another provider is the easiest fix when one bank fails.
• Keep a little cash. It sounds old-fashioned, but a small amount of cash covers coffee, a bus fare or a parking meter when cards won’t work.
• Add a second card to your phone wallet. Apple Pay and Google Wallet let you store cards from more than one bank, so you can switch in seconds.
• Don’t keep all your bills on one account. If rent or mortgage payments leave on a day your bank is down, a second account gives you room to move money.
• Check your statements afterwards. Once service returns, look for double charges or payments that went through even though the terminal said declined.

And be careful online. Outages bring out scammers posing as support staff in replies on social media. Revolut will not ask for your passcode or card details in a direct message, so ignore anyone who does.