An unexpected extra payment: Banco Santander mistakenly delivers millions of euros to its customers in the United Kingdom

Banco Santander has rushed into a process to recover 130 million pounds (155 million euros) paid to thousands of British customers by mistake on Christmas Day. This technical error has caused thousands of accounts to have received a double payment December 25 as if it were a gift from Santa Claus.

Banco Santander is the largest bank in Spain and has a strong presence in the United Kingdom or Latin America. It was at his UK affiliate that he accidentally made a second payment on December 25 to some 75,000 people and companies.

Santander tries to solve the problem

The blunder has forced Santander to speak with the banks whose clients received the money or, in some cases, to contact the clients themselves directly. The newspaper The Times has been in charge of reporting this fact in the first instance.

“We regret that, due to a technical problem, some payments from our corporate clients have been incorrectly duplicated in the accounts of the recipients,” said a Santander spokesperson.

“We will work hard with many banks in the UK to recover duplicate transactions in the coming days,” says the bank’s spokesman, as published in the agency Bloomberg.

Several banks involved

The Times reveals that the money went to bank accounts like Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank y Virgin Money UK. The money has gone to the clients of these banks whose payers use Banco Santander as the distribution entity for payroll or payments.

Some of the banks fear that customers have already spent the funds, reveals the British newspaper. The payments came from Santander’s own reserves, which means that your own customers were not affected.

Santander has 20,000 employees in the UK, where it has 450 branches and manages £ 209 billion in customer loans and £ 201 billion in customer funds.