By mistake, the Santander bank paid a huge bonus on Christmas Day of 130 million pounds to tens of thousands of people and businesses. The Times reveals it. The financial institution is now trying to recover the large sum.
The mistake concerns the 400 physical branches Santander has in the UK: the payments come from the lender’s reserves and not from clients’ accounts. This means that no Santander customer should have their account in ‘red’ due to the maxi ‘bonus’ sent accidentally. A reassurance to this effect came from a Santander spokesperson who has already sent an apology on behalf of the bank: «We are sorry that, due to a technical problem, some payments from our corporate customers were mistakenly duplicated on the recipients’ accounts. None of our clients ran out of money and we will work hard with many banks across the UK to recover duplicate transactions over the next few days. ‘
In short, these are hours of tension for Santander who, after having accidentally paid the maxi bonus, is now facing a battle to recover the enormous sum from the customers of rival banks. Approximately 75,000 people and companies were ‘beneficiaries’ of the transfers that came from around 2,000 accounts in Santander. The problem is that the money has been sent to rival bank account holders, such as Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank, and Virgin Money, and mostly involves suppliers who have in many cases been paid twice for their services. According to reports, there is a concern that some customers who received the money have already spent the extra money, making recovery more difficult. For this reason, still according to rumors revealed by the British press, Santander is trying to approach some customers directly to recover the money. Some of the money, however, would have already been recovered, even if the amount is not clear.