The bank is trying to recover £130 million ($175 million) mistakenly paid on Christmas Day.
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Santander’s UK bank is seeking recovery of £130m ($175m) mistakenly paid on Christmas Day.
Due to a “technical problem”, 75,000 payments were made twice by about 2,000 corporate and commercial account holders to their recipients, the bank said in a statement sent to AFP news agency, confirming a report in The Times.
The bank said the repeat transactions on Christmas morning came from the bank’s own reserves, meaning no customers were left out of pocket.
It added that it “will work hard with multiple banks across the UK to recover duplicate transactions in the coming days”.
The bank said payments could include wages and payments to suppliers.
The Times reported that payments were made to accounts of several UK banks, which are now being asked by Santander to recover the money.
A bank told the newspaper that it would be reluctant to recover the money if the account holder had already spent the windfall and it would lead them to overdraft.
Santander said it also had “procedures in place as a bank to demand the recovery of those funds directly from the recipients”.
The bank said the error was caused by a scheduling issue that “we quickly identified and corrected”.
Santander’s British High Street wing has 14 million account holders and made a net profit of more than £1 billion in the first three quarters of 2021.
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