Major Revolut outage leaves expats and tourists across Spain, UK and Europe stranded at checkouts

Thousands of international residents and tourists across Spain woke up to financial frustration on Tuesday morning as fintech and online banking giant Revolut suffered a widespread European outage.

The technical glitch left cardholders across the Costa del Sol, the Canary Islands, and major cities including Madrid and Barcelona unable to pay for everyday goods, send transfers or log into the mobile application.

Outage tracking platform Downdetector logged thousands of service failure reports during the morning peak. According to telemetry data, roughly 63 per cent of reported problems related directly to app functionality, 20 per cent to money transfers and 8 per cent to login failures, while card payments at point-of-sale (POS) terminals in supermarkets, cafes and petrol stations were also rejected.

For many in Spain's large British and international communities - who rely heavily on Revolut for currency exchange and daily spending - the timing of the outage caused significant disruption.

Users reported card declines at supermarket checkouts and cafes across Andalucía and the coast, forcing customers to abandon purchases or scramble for alternative local cards and physical cash.

"App not working, card rejected," reported one affected user in Spain on service monitor IsDown.

Acknowledging the widespread technical difficulties, Revolut issued an official statement apologising to affected customers across its primary markets:

"Our engineering team is actively working to restore full service as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Despite the widespread disruptions recorded by third-party tracking services, Revolut's official online system status page temporarily continued to display all systems as "operational," adding to customer confusion before engineering updates were published.

Revolut has reassured users that customer funds and personal data remain safe while its technical team works to resolve the backend issue. Customers in Spain needing to make urgent payments are advised to use alternative cards or cash until services return to normal.