Some tens of thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day when European bank Santander mistakenly deposited $176 million into accounts held by its UK customers.
According to NBC news, the mistake occurred when payments from 2,000 business accounts in the U.K. were processed twice, and as well, accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies. That is, some employees received double wages, while suppliers also got more than what they were expecting.
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The bank blamed the duplicate payments were caused by a "scheduling issue" that has now been rectified. The bank says it is now working to recover the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into the bank accounts operated by other banks.
Santander said that the process for recovering the funds is an industry process known as the "bank error recovery process," while adding that it has started to work with other banks in accordance with the process and that the banks will help in the recovery process from their customer's accounts
"We're sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients' accounts," a Santander spokesperson told CNBC.
"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."
Meanwhile, Santander isn't the first bank to have committed such a blunder. Last year, Chase Bank, mistakenly deposited $50 billion into a Louisiana man's account though the account was later returned to its correct balance. In a statement to CNN, Chase Banks blamed the issue on a "technical glitch".