ASX closed lower; TPG dipped on half-year results; Facebook announces Novi wallet launch.

The Australian market tumbled from morning gains to close 0.03% or 3.7 points lower at 7460.90 on Friday as the gold miners weighed down the market. For the week the ASX lost 2.2%.

The tech sector closed Friday’s session in negative territory with Nearmap losing 3.55%, EML Payments fell 1.95% and Megaport finished the day down 1.81%.

Bitcoin is trading 6.09% higher over the last 24-hours at US$47,190.89 at 4:15pm AEST.

Telco company TPG took a hit today after releasing its first half-year results since its merger with Vodafone Australia. For the 6-months, TPG reported a 71% increase in revenue to $2.6bn, EBITDA growth of 67% to $886m, but net profit after tax fell 8% to $76m.

Making headlines, Facebook is preparing to launch its digital wallet, Novi, in a bid to compete with the likes of Afterpay/Square Cash app and other digital financial services platforms. Facebook’s head of payments David Marcus shared the news on the internet blog Medium also confirming the product will compete by offering free person-to-person payments domestically and internationally using the Novi wallet.

And Elon Musk has announced at Tesla’s AI Day event that the company is working on a 5ft AI ‘humanoid robot’ to handle tasks that are ‘unsafe for humans, repetitive or boring’.