Bank apologises after payments taken twice from some accounts

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The Co-operative Bank has apologised after customers said a glitch had taken payments twice from some small business account holders.

One person on X, formerly Twitter, complained that they are “almost £5k down thanks to this with no resolution in sight”.

The Co-op Bank apologised on Tuesday, and said only a “small number” of its 96,000 small business customers were affected.

A spokesperson said: “We are aware there are a small number of SME account holders who have duplicated payments showing in their balances and are in the process of correcting this issue.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and are supporting customers during this period.”

Customers wrote about how they had been affected on social media, with some reporting long delays to reach staff and others saying they were deep in their overdraft.

One person, who said they are a customer, wrote on X that they “have loads of duplicated transactions from months ago”.

Another person wrote to the bank on X: “Can someone in authority please tell us what’s happened to our business account.

“We have been in overdraft all day and still waiting to hear from you.”

A third person posted: “Utter shambles regarding duplicate historical transactions being taken from customer accounts without any notification from you this has happened.

“Thousands of £ out peoples accounts without even notifying customers. Tell us how this will be resolved?”

Last month, Co-op Bank agreed to be bought by Coventry Building Society for £780 million.

The deal will create a high street lender with assets of £89 billion. It will also see the private equity-owned Co-op Bank return to mutual ownership.