Bank mistakenly disbursed £ 130 million on Christmas Day in the UK – Banking & Finance

On December 25, due to a “technical problem”, 75,000 payments made by about 2,000 professional bank customers were copied into their users’ accounts, Santander confirmed in a report to the AFP in a report to the British newspaper The Times. .

The duplicate transactions were debited directly from the bank, and “no customer paid out of their own pocket”, Sandander was assured, noting that he was working with “several banks across the UK to recover the amount in question”.

The beneficiaries of the transfers were mainly workers or suppliers of certain Santander client companies, who received either salary or double pay.

The transfers were made to the accounts of several British banks, which complicated the recovery of the money, the Times said.

Santander said it “quickly detects and fixes” a planning problem that led to incorrect payments, and that it has opened up a “bank error recovery procedure” with beneficiary banks.

The British branch of the Spanish bank Santander has 14 million customers and recorded a net profit of over £ 1 billion in the first nine months of 2021.