Santander accidentally handed out £130m to its customers

The bank said in a statement, "Due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate customers were accidentally copied into the recipients' accounts." In the statement, it was noted that no customers were victimized and that many banks in the UK will work hard to resolve the error in the coming days. It was stated that the error was caused by the second mistaken payment made to 75,000 people and the company on December 25. Santander staff rushed to recover the mistakenly deposited money, but the fact that most of the amount was deposited into accounts at rival banks made it difficult for them. A payroll manager told the BBC this mistake cast a shadow over Christmas and the next day, adding: "It ruined my holiday season because I mistakenly made hundreds of thousands of payments and I thought I had done something wrong. I thought it was just me and I was going to get into trouble." Stating that Santander did not provide any information on how the repayment should be made, the payroll manager described the incident as a mess. The bank announced that it has started to negotiate with rival banks, including Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank, and Virgin Money, to correct the error, and that these banks will "try to save money from their customers' accounts." Santander also reported that they could contact people directly to get the money back.