MILAN (Reuters) -French digital payments company Worldline on Friday said gas roadworks accidentally damaged its network connection to its data centres in Italy, disrupting services for customers that have yet to be resolved.

The issues occurred amid the busy Black Friday shopping season, leading Italian business group Fipe-Confcommercio to express "strong concern".

Worldline's payment services have been disrupted since Thursday morning, mainly in Italy but also in other markets, the company said on Friday.

"The installation of gas pipes by local authorities severely damaged our provider's cables and network," the company said.

In an updated statement issued later on Friday Worldline said that its provider had started works to restore the severely damaged cables.

"In the meantime, Worldline is working tirelessly to identify potential solutions to reactivate services, pending the restoration of the physical infrastructure," the company said in its latest statement, apologising to consumers and shopkeepers for the inconvenience.

In a separate statement, Italian payments group Nexi confirmed that Worldline had yet to resolve the problem, and said it had launched an investigation and was reserving the right to take actions to protect the company and its customers.

The Bank of Italy also weighed in, saying it was monitoring the situation. "Some of the impacted payment services have been reactivated, while malfunctions remain for some credit and debit card circuits," the central bank said.  

(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin and Alvise Armellini; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Evans)