Santander faced a technical issue and transferred EUR130 million ($145.83 million) on Christmas Day, and now retrieves the payment error.
Santander has accidentally transferred duplicate payments to a string of 75,000 transactions on Christmas Day, with a total amount of EUR130 million ($145.83 million), and now demands its money back.
The money was transferred from the bank’s reserves to recipients’ accounts. The error occurred due to the bank’s scheduling issue when payments from 2,000 business accounts were made twice, but this has already been fixed.
The bank incorrectly duplicated 75,000 transactions
Santander will be working with many banks across the UK to recover the 75,000 duplicated transactions. The payments include wages and payments to suppliers which could be difficult to retrieve.
"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 said.
The banks whose customers received double payments in this blunder are Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank and Virgin Money, according to a report from The Times. It added that recovering money could be a difficult task as much of it was deposited in accounts at Santander’s rival banks.
One of the banks told the newspaper that it would be reluctant to recover funds if the account holder already spent the extra money, and it will not push its customers into overdraft.
Pay UK, which runs the main payment systems in the UK is in talks with the banks on how to reverse the accidental payments. Some of the amounts have already been recovered.
Santander said it has put in place the process of recovering the funds directly from recipients.
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