Can an interest rate that a firm sets itself be a reference interest rate provided the firm publishes it, for example on its website?
To be a reference interest rate, the rate has to be “from a publicly available source which can be verified by both parties to a payment service contract”. Unlike the reference exchange rate definition, the reference interest rate definition does not refer to rates made available by the payment service provider itself. Question 146 on the European Commission’s PSD Q&A website advises that this “can be interpreted as requiring a publicly available ‘index or base’. Typically, this comes from independent sources such as LIBOR, Euribor or ECB rates.” We expect the reference interest rates used in practice to be external indices or bases such as LIBOR, Euribor or central bank rates, or perhaps a basket of rates set by other banks.
