Santander UK played Santa by mistake. A bank error sended £130m to 75,000 customers, on Christmas Day.

Tens of thousands of people awoke on Christmas morning to a surprise from an unexpected benefactor – Santander. The bank mistakenly deposited £130m into 75,000 accounts on 25 December, according to BBC.

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.

„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, although the second payment was funded by Santander.

But because the cash has been sent to accounts at rival banks, it may be harder to retrieve and Santander will have to rely on the kindness of others to get back the cash.

The bank stressed that it had already begun speaking to the rival banks – which The Times said included Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Co-operative Bank and Virgin Money.

Santander said those banks would „look to recover the money from their customers’ accounts.”

However, it was not clear how the banks would respond if their customers had already spent the money, meaning returning it would push them into overdraft.

According to The Times, one bank said it would be reluctant to take the money back if it meant the account holder was tipped into overdraft as a result.

Pay UK, which runs the main payment systems in the UK, is holding talks on how to reverse the payments and some cash has already been recovered.

Under the “bank error recovery” process, Santander is talking with rivals and approaching some customers directly.