Now, the bank is trying to recover the money, but many account holders have already either transferred funds to other banks or have already spent them.
Spanish bank Santander mistakenly sent around $176m (£130 million) to thousands of UK customers.
According to The Times, Santander’s employees are now frantically trying to reclaim the funds, which is made more difficult by the fact that much of it was deposited in competing banks’ accounts.
The technical error occurred on December 25. The bank made a mistake and repeated transactions to employees of 2,000 British companies, totaling £130m or around $176m in accounts.
After noticing the error, the banking institution attempted to recover the money. Some clients, however, were able to withdraw the funds, while others were able to move it to other banks. They are now negotiating with Santander. Experts suggest he is unlikely to be able to get the full amount.
“We’re sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts,” the bank stated in a statement.
“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.”
The bank stated that it has already opened discussions with competitor banks, including Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank, and Virgin Money, according to The Times.
These banks would “look to recover the money from their customers’ accounts,” according to Santander.
However, it was unclear how banks would react if their customers had already spent the money, putting them in danger of going into debt if they returned it.
Santander stated that it may approach individuals personally in order to recover the funds.
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