The U.K. wing of Santander bank is trying to recover more than $175 million in accidental payments made on Christmas Day.

The bank said 75,000 accounts received double payments over the holiday, many of which were to rival banks and will be difficult to retrieve. The error was the result of a scheduling error that has been rectified, it said.

MONETARY POLICY IS ABOUT MONEY, NOT INTEREST RATES

"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, according to multiple outlets. "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."

The secondary payments came from Santander's own reserves and not the 2,000 business accounts that made the initial transactions.

"It's just a complete shambles," a Santander payroll manager told the BBC. "How they are going to recover it, I just don't know."

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The multi-national bank serves 14 million customers in the United Kingdom.

Santander did not respond to the Washington Examiner's request for comment.