Some tens of thousands of people woke up on Christmas Day to doubled wages and a higher-than-expected bank balance after Santander did an oopsie, depositing £130 million ($176 million) into accounts held by its UK customers. Santander would now like the money back, please.
The deposit mishap was the result of a mysterious “scheduling issue,” according to The Times, which first reported the story. The bank confirmed to The Verge that some payments were accidentally doubled. (Santander is characterizing it as a “technical issue.”) Those transactions included those from 2,000 businesses, as well as accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies like a corporate Ebeneezer Scrooge who’d been scared into generosity.
