Bank accidentally paid $175 million to its customers on Christmas Day. Then, tried to get it back

Anyone waking up to an unexpected deposit in their bank account on Christmas day is bound to think of it as a miracle. Something like that happened to customers of Santander UK bank in 2022 when a total of $175 million was transferred to their accounts on Christmas. But the joy was short-lived as the bank soon revealed that a technical glitch was responsible for the accidental transaction.

The error led to 75,000 scheduled and one-off payments getting deposited twice by the bank's system. A spokesperson for the bank said that the error was soon identified and rectified. The error reportedly affected 2,000 commercial as well as corporate accounts, The Times reported.

Jenny, a UK resident, was among those who received the extra money and told Insider that she was paid twice. According to reports, her scheduled wage of £1,764.50 arrived on December 24. She then received a second payment for the same amount the next day, which happened to be Christmas. However, when she contacted the employer they denied paying her twice. 

After further digging, she realized that it had all been a mix-up on the bank's part, and the same was resolved soon. "It was confusing, I just wanted it out of my account because it's hard to tell how much money you have." According to reports, the problem only affected the UK customers. The industry's bank error recovery process enables banks to retrieve transactions from third-party banks. In some cases, Santander could also contact those affected directly.

This is not the first time a bank has accidentally paid extra money to customers. Last year, a Malaysian woman named Hafidzah Abdullah went viral after revealing that her bank accidentally deposited an equivalent of $86 million to her account. In a LinkedIn post, Abdullah explained that a glitch in the banking system led to the erroneous deposit, but since the amount was so large, the system froze her bank account, according to Bloomberg.

"They say money can't buy happiness, but Maybank knows how to buy frustration," she wrote. "Three days of Maybank glitches during salary payout period is like a comedy of errors that no one finds funny. My personal account got blocked, the company account is unusable (SECURE2U is not working), and visiting Maybank has become my new daily exercise routine."

She later confirmed that the issue had been noticed by the bank and resolved. "It was not a system-wide issue, and the customer account was not compromised," a spokesperson for the bank told the outlet via email. She later also confirmed in the comments section that she was now able to access her personal and company accounts without an issue.

While banking errors are rare, the best thing to do is simply contact the bank and leave the money untouched until things are resolved. Banks also run regular audits and hence they are most likely to realize the mistake and reverse the transaction sooner or later.