MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Credem and France's Worldline announced on Wednesday a long-term partnership in collecting payments for retailers in Italy.

Under the agreement, Credem will transfer all such so-called merchant acquiring activities to the French digital payments company for 95 million euros ($100.42 million).

They also signed a 15-year commercial deal to distribute Worldline's products and services through Credem's network.

Their cooperation will include the management of the payment activities of more than 25,000 merchants with 32,000 points of sales which generated transactions of about 3 billion euros in 2023, the companies said in a statement.

The Italian lender said the deal is part of its strategy to offer transactional and digital services to its merchant customers.

The companies, which started exclusive talks in June, expect to close the deal next year, subject to regulatory approvals.

Credem was advised by Vitale&Co and by Molinari, while Worldline was advised by PWC and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

($1 = 0.9461 euros)

(Reporting by Cristina Carlevaro; Editing by Alvise Armellini and Richard Chang)