Santander mistakenly deposited £130 million into 75. 000 accounts on Christmas Day

Santander Bank mistakenly deposited £130 million into 75. 000 accounts on  25 December, surprising several on Christmas morning from an unexpected benefactor.

Santander’s staff are now rushing to claw back the money, although the job is being difficult because much of it was deposited in accounts at rival banks. The error apparently occurred when payments from 2, 000 business accounts were made twice.

“ We’re sorry that due top a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts,”  but none of our clients were at any point left out of pocket as a result and we will be working hard with may banks across the UK to recover the duplicated transactions over the coming days”, the bank said in a statement.

It further said the mistake may have meant that some people were, in effect, paid twice from their employer’s account, although the second payment was funded by Santander.

The bank stressed that it had already begun speaking to the rival banks= which included Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank and Virgin Money, which would “look to recover from their customers’ accounts”.