Oligopoly: money to waste, status quo to preserve
Pros
With strong winds in our backs from customers getting off cash worldwide and the only competition from a similarly badly run organization, MasterCard vaults are loaded with dough spent ever so freely. Lavish customer events and entertainment, gorgeous marketing campaigns and interesting projects that don't have to make impact, nice salary and benefits for employees, and nobody has to really work hard.
Cons
During my years here, we have been overwhelmed with speeches about new culture that would be different from the days of associations, but MasterCard remains a mostly political place with senior executives caring much more about their personas rather than clients or employees. Executive management meetings feel like user-card salesmen conventions from the 80s. HR has the most power, often making and overruling business management's decisions. With the exception of 2-3 people of Level 3 and up, you are learning by watching how executives behaving and then doing the exact opposite. I used to work for Visa and we couldn't figure out how our so badly managed company could be kicking MasterCard out all over the world... now I understand why.