Santander has issued an urgent warning
Santander has issued a warning ahead of Christmas, as many customers have reported money having been taken from their accounts. In a new alert issued this week, the banking giant said losses had soared by some 75% across the festive period.
Santander said it witnessed a dramatic surge in online shopping scams over Christmas 2024, as criminals targeted panicked shoppers. The high street lender revealed it recorded nearly 450 purchase scams in the fortnight leading up to Christmas last year, with fraudsters luring victims through fake bargains and non-existent products.
During Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2024, customers reported losses that were 75% higher than in 2023, and the bank fears a similar spike this year. Santander calculates that 3,207 parcels failed to appear under Christmas trees nationwide last year due to purchase scams affecting its customers alone. Many of these were connected to fraudulent advertisements on social media platforms offering massive reductions on sought-after presents.
In total, £30,722 was reported pilfered from its customers during the three-day Christmas period in 2024, up from £17,552 the previous year. Should the same rate of growth be repeated in 2025, the bank cautions that losses could surge to more than £50,000 over the Christmas holiday window alone.
Chris Ainsley, Head of Fraud Risk Management at Santander UK, said shoppers are especially vulnerable in the final days before Christmas.
“In the days before Christmas, shoppers are at their most vulnerable. As we approach the last shopping weekend, people are stressed, in a rush and desperate for gifts to arrive on time, and scammers know it,” he said.
“Hundreds of customers paid for items that simply never existed, and by the time they realised, it was too late to replace them. As we head into the busiest shopping period of the year, we want people to pause, double-check the seller, and be cautious of deals that look too good to be true.”
Experts suggest the 75% spike demonstrates how fraud has become increasingly sophisticated, driven by artificial intelligence. Colette Mason, Author and AI Consultant at London-based Clever Clogs AI, cautioned that scams now appear virtually indistinguishable from genuine retailers.
She said: “Santander’s warning is spot on, but people need to understand the full threat of AI. We’re not talking about dodgy emails with typos anymore. “We’re talking about fully cloned sites that pass every credibility check, personalised emails that sound exactly like your favourite retailer, and fake product pages that mirror legitimate ones pixel-perfect.
“The festive season has always been a scammer’s paradise, but AI’s turned it into an industrial operation.” She advised Newspage: “One practical tip that actually works? Don’t click email links ever. Type the website URL manually.”
Rohit Parmar-Mistry, Founder of Burton-on-Trent-based Pattrn Data, argued the magnitude of the rise reveals that existing safeguards are inadequate. “Santander is right to raise the alarm, but telling people to ‘be careful’ while scammers run wild on social media is like putting a plaster on a gaping wound,” he said. “Until regulation forces platforms to clean up, be your own firewall.”
Patricia McGirr, founder of the Burnley-based Repossession Rescue Network, highlighted how the human toll behind these statistics is frequently overlooked. “These aren’t careless shoppers, they’re hardworking families desperately trying to do right by their kids,” she said.
“The real tragedy isn’t just the stolen money… it’s the shame, the guilt, and the stress of trying to explain to your children why Christmas didn’t arrive.” She emphasised that alerts must be accompanied by stronger measures to tackle a crisis that is escalating at a frightening pace annually.
