Sophie Downing from Nottingham became, at least on paper, the richest person in the world after a technical error on a coffee shop gift card showed a balance of sixty-three quadrillion pounds — 63,000,000,000,000,000.

Downing discovered the unusual situation on February twelfth when she attempted to pay for a matcha latte at a branch of the “200 Degrees Coffee” chain in Nottingham.

She expected the Christmas gift card to contain a modest balance of ten pounds.

Instead, she was stunned to see an astonishing sum of more than sixty-three quadrillion pounds displayed on the screen — the number sixty-three followed by fifteen zeros.

For comparison, the amount is one hundred thousand times greater than the estimated fortune of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and approximately six hundred and seventy times the combined gross domestic product of all countries in the world.

“The guy at the register was completely confused — his face said it all,” Downing recalled.

“This huge number came up on the screen, and he told me, ‘I’ve never seen that before, but I’m perfectly fine with you keeping it.’”

When she checked the card again several days later, Downing found that the enormous balance was still showing.

In her view, the incident was likely caused by a technical glitch after a cashier accidentally scanned the wrong barcode.

The coffee chain has not contacted her since.

Despite the temptation, Downing chose to act honestly.

“I could walk into the store and clear all the shelves, but I don’t want to take advantage of the situation,” she said.

“It would have been much more useful if it were a gift card for another store.” For now, she intends to continue using the card — strictly for coffee — unless she is told otherwise.