What is Headquarters?

Headquarters means the place a company is based, and for a bank it is the country of its head office rather than the branch you visit. The country is written as a short code from the international standard, so Ukraine reads UA and Spain reads ES. It matters to you because the head office sets the rules the bank follows: the deposit protection you get, the regulator that supervises it and which law applies to your account. A card you can hold is not tied to a single market just because that is where the bank sits. A-Bank has its headquarters in UA, and ABB Bank in AZ.