Santander is attempting to recover £130million after accidentally paying out the cash to tens of thousands of its customers on Christmas Day.
Around 75,000 individuals and businesses were incorrectly paid two times by Santander. The second payment came directly from their own bank reserves.
Spanish banks will have a difficult time getting their money back because the funds were sent to beneficiaries belonging to a number of banks including NatWest, Barclays and HSBC.
These banks can take money back that has been incorrectly paid to customers, but they are concerned about the possibility of some people spending it.
A total of 75,000 businesses and individuals who had been set up to receive one-off or monthly payments from 2000 Santander account companies were paid twice.
One company stated it did not want to return money to customers in the event that they would be forced into an overdraft.
Pay UK (which runs the UK’s major payment systems) is currently discussing the matter with Santander, while Santander desperately attempts to recuperate the money.
Bank error recovery is a method used by the bank to send money to different banks, or to cash recipients to recover it.
Santander spokeswoman said to The Times, “We are sorry for the error in which payments made by corporate clients were duplicated on recipients’ accounts.
Because the money was sent to beneficiaries belonging to a variety of banks, such as Barclays and HSBC, it will be difficult for them to receive their money back.
“None our clients were ever out of pocket, and we’re working to get the duplicate transactions back in compliance with industry standards.”
According to the spokeswoman, “The duplication of payments was due to a scheduling error which we identified quickly and corrected.” Although the recipients and purposes of payments will vary between clients, they could include wages or supplier payments.
Santander (which has 14million customers) was caught in a bind earlier in the year. It was made to apologise for a glitch that meant customers couldn’t make payments for an entire Saturday.
And thousands of customers could not access their accounts online in August 2013.