30th December, 2021
Santander Bank in UK accidentally played Santa Claus on Christmas Day, paying out £130 Million to thousands of accounts, in a massive blunder.
Approximately 75,000 Brits or companies received a second wage or supplier payment from Santander account holders on December 25.
The blunder – which saw 2,000 accounts lose funds twice – affected both regular payments and one-offs, The Sun reports.
The money was sent to Britons with Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank and Virgin Money accounts.
Santander must now launch cross-company talks to get the funds back.
A spokesman for Santander said: “We’re sorry that, due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts.
“None of our clients were at any point left out of pocket as a result and we will be working hard with many banks across the UK to recover the duplicated transactions over the coming days.”
Santander Bank, N. A., formerly Sovereign Bank, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Spanish Santander Group.
It is based in Boston and its principal market is the northeastern United States.