Zhejiang China Commodities City Group recently launched a small commodity digital free trade application in an effort to promote digital transformation.

With the support of the local government, the app has been connected to 19 business systems of eight departments of the group, over 1,000 foreign trade companies, and about 55,000 merchants of the Yiwu Small Commodities Markets.

The app can provide services such as accurate matchmaking between merchants and buyers, international freight forwarding, and settling exchange deals independently.

So far, deals worth 29.8 billion yuan ($4.41 billion) have been made on the online app. From January to May this year, Yiwu's exports increased by 39 percent year-on-year to 167.8 billion yuan.

Officials said that the operation of the app is the first step for Yiwu to build a new-generation market and move towards digital trade. Yiwu will carry out digital transformation to remove restrictions on time and space presented by traditional small commodity markets.

Wang Dong, general manager of Zhejiang China Commodities City Group, said digital transformation will be applied to various aspects such as sales, warehousing, and logistics in order to create a solid foundation for the development of cross-border e-commerce and the digital economy.