Bittersweet day for Banco Santander. This morning, customers of the popular bank accessed their accounts worried. And all after a message they received: “Important notice! Due to an incident, it is possible that some of your card movements are duplicated. We are sorry for the inconvenience. We are working to solve it as soon as possible” they read. And if, When accessing their accounts, the charges on their cards were duplicated.
News that has also generated discontent through social networks. Many of its clients wrote different tweets about it through the social network X (formerly Twitter): “We want to know when we are going to be able to obtain a solution to the duplicate payments that we are being charged,” said one, “Whoever it is duplicated six charges on me at the Bank,” another added later. “I am missing more than 1000 euros in my account. Who can I talk to?” and so one after another. A more than evident anger that they have decided to express on networks.
And all for one computer incidence, As the company itself has explained on its social networks: “we are trying to solve what happened,” they responded to a user. Furthermore, the bank has not hesitated to give more explanations: “We are sorry for the inconvenience, we are working to resolve the incident as soon as possible in time to regularize the movements that now appear duplicated,” as they have informed the EFE Agency.
We are sorry for the inconvenience, Luisma, we are working to resolve the incident as soon as possible to regularize the movements that now appear duplicated.
— Santander Spain Responds (@santander_resp) January 23, 2025
Although even from the financial institution They don’t know how long it will take to solve this problem. Technically, they have clarified that it is not a worldwide error, since these duplicate charges are only occurring in the accounts of some clients in our country.
Other computer failures at Banco Santander
This is not the first case of incidents that occur within Banco Santander. Which adds even more to the situation of uncertainty that its clients suffer. Less than a year ago, specifically in March of last year 2024, another computer error occurred in the accounts of several bank users.
On that occasion the charges were also shown duplicated, but also the income, something that in the end did not affect the balance of the accounts of those affected. According to Santander, it was just a display error when accessing the users’ profile. Also, it affected purchases and their authorizations in online stores when purchasing through websites, since a double purchase could be seen for just one transaction. It was Ana Botín herself who at that time came forward and reported that it was not a cyber attack, that they had not suffered any hack: “it was just a computer error.” And so it was, it only took a couple of hours to resolve and the system returned to normal.
Other banks and cyber attacks
Banco Santander is not the only bank that has suffered computer errors in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the CaixaBank bank stated that it had had a technical incident.
This error was reflected in the application. When you tried to access it, you received an error message very similar to the one from Santander Bank: “your information is not available, please try again later.” Sorry for the inconvenience.” Caixabank did not take long to find solutions to the problem and the service was restored in a short time.