Australian shares rose on Friday, helped by mining and energy names on the back of strong underlying commodity prices, while buy-now-pay-later stocks fell after a U.S. agency sought data on business practices from five companies in the sector. The S&P/ASX 200 (.AXJO) firmed 0.7% to 7,343.8 by 0213 GMT after a three-session losing streak but was down 0.2% for the week. Energy stocks (.AXEJ) jumped as much as 2.3%, marking their best intraday session since Dec. 7, after crude oil prices jumped overnight. Whitehaven Coal (WHC.AX) led gains on the sub-index with a 4.6% rise, followed by a 2.8% climb in Ampol (ALD.AX). Miners (.AXMM) gained as much as 1.9% on strong iron ore prices. Global miner BHP (BHP.AX) added 1.4%, while iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group (FMG.AX) rose 1.2%. Gold stocks (.AXGD) advanced as much as 5.2%, tracking an overnight jump in bullion prices. The index was set for its best session since November 2020, with Alkane Resources (ALK.AX) rising about 20.5%. The buy-now-pay-later sector came under pressure after the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau asked Affirm (AFRM.O), Afterpay, PayPal (PYPL.O), Zip and Klarna for information on their business practices, saying it was concerned about user debt, regulatory arbitrage and data harvesting. Afterpay (APT.AX) dropped 9.2% to its lowest level since October 2020 and Zip Co (Z1P.AX) tumbled about 9% to its weakest level since May 2020, dragging down the tech sector (.AXIJ). New Zealand"s benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index (.NZ50) erased early gains to fall 0.2% to 12758.05 by 0213 GMT. Reporting by Harshita Swaminathan and Savyata Mishra; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.