UK bank mistakenly pays $175m on Christmas Day

(CNN) -- UK bank Santander got into the Christmas spirit this year by paying a total of 130 million pounds ($175 million) to its customers by mistake on December 25.

The total payment was divided into 75,000 transactions for around 2,000 corporate and commercial clients, Santander said in a statement published on Thursday.

"We regret that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate customers have been incorrectly duplicated in recipients' accounts," the statement read.

"None of our customers were left with no money in their accounts as a result of this and we will be working hard with many banks across the UK to recover duplicate transactions in the coming days."

Santander blamed the duplicate payments on a scheduling issue, which the bank said was "quickly identified and rectified."

The transactions were both regular and one-time payments that could have included vendor payments or salaries, he added.

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Santander is working to recover funds from receiving banks through the "bank error recovery process," according to the statement, and has processes in place to seek recovery of funds deposited in error directly from recipients.

Santander UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of global bank Banco Santander, which is based in Spain.

The UK operation has 14 million active customers and 616 branches, according to its website.

While $175 million is a significant sum to pay in error, it pales in insignificance against the $500 million US bank Citibank lost in one of the "biggest mistakes in banking history."

The bank accidentally sent $900 million to Revlon cosmetics company lenders and went to court in August 2020 to try to recover some $500 million that had not been voluntarily repaid.

But in February, a US District Court judge ruled that the bank will not be able to get the money back.