LONDON–Tens of thousands of people awoke on Christmas morning to a surprise present not from Santa, but from Santander, their bank.
The bank mistakenly deposited £130m into 75,000 accounts on Christmas Day.
Now reports the Times of London, Santander's staff are now rushing to claw back the money, although the job is being made more difficult because much of it was deposited in accounts at rival banks.
The error occurred when payments from 2,000 business accounts were made twice, according to the report.
"We're sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients' accounts," the bank said 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."
It said the mistake may have meant that some people were, in effect, paid twice from their employer's account.
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However, the bank stressed that it had already begun speaking to the rival banks, which The Times reports includes Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank and Virgin Money.
Santander said it would "look to recover the money from their customers' accounts,” but are said to be worried that it may already have been spent and they do not want to risk pushing customers into overdraft.
Santander also indicated that it may contact people directly to get the money back.