GUANGZHOU, April 4 (Xinhua) -- China's e-commerce giant Alibaba saw strong growth in transactions via its cross-border procurement platform -- 1688.com -- in 2018, said Wang Hai, vice president of Alibaba Group.

The sector surged by more than 120 percent year on year in 2018. More than one million merchants with sales networks covering over 200 countries and regions are doing business on the platform, including AliExpress, Lazada, Amazon and eBay, said Wang at the 2019 Alibaba Cross-border E-commerce Summit & Sourcing Fair that closed Thursday in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province.

He said the number of buyers who sourced their inventory doubled.

Cross-border supply has become the platform's key business for future development, as it offers digital spot purchasing services to global e-commerce sellers, linking them with domestic source factories, Wang said.

The cross-border e-commerce sector of 1688.com provides a variety of goods from nearly 30 sources of origin, including apparel, bags, underwear and toys from the cities of Guangzhou and Shantou in Guangdong Province, shoes from Quanzhou in neighboring Fujian Province, as well as home textiles from Nantong in Jiangsu Province.

Launched in 1999, 1688.com is a leading wholesale marketplace that connects nearly 30 million enterprise bulk buyers and sellers worldwide and offers 250 million online goods.