The rain of money on Christmas was a system failure in the bank
You look at your account on Christmas Day and you’re surprised by an unexpected rain of money: this could happen to thousands of customers from various banks in the UK who received transfers from Santander Bank. As reported by The Times, a few days ago the financial institution “mistakenly” initiated around 75,000 transactions and incorrectly transferred £130 million, which was roughly equal to €154 million.
A detailed investigation of the incident immediately showed that payments were made only twice from the approximately 2,000 business accounts in Great Britain – including many wage and distribution payments. So far, the bank has only reported for error analysis that “problems in timing planning” were attributable to wrong transfers and they can be remedied after a thorough investigation.
“We regret that, due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate customers were mistakenly booked twice in recipient accounts,” a Santander spokesperson told The Times. It is now necessary in collaboration with the recipient banks and Pay UK, the most important payment system in the United Kingdom, to reverse the double transaction.
Headaches for Payroll Clerks
While Santander Bank is focusing on the complicated process of refunding the money, the mistake causes major headache for the affected company at some point or the other. One payroll clerk told me, “It ruined my vacation days because I thought I accidentally overpaid hundreds of thousands—thought I did something wrong.” CNBC,
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