These are just tricks by chief officers in the company to gain some points as innovative leaders or something.
It is just PR, they have no idea what they are doing or what they could gain from using decentralized technologies.
They usually just end up centralized their technology and retain some inefficient blockchain structure that makes no sense in a centralized system.
Mastercard can just use Bitcoin if they really want an efficient payment system with blockchain technology, but I think they just want to appear competitive while they are losing their business to the blockchain.
Source? "Trust me"
They can easily recruit blockchain developers, they are smart people not lucky bastards who are constantly lucky in business. They understand what they are doing and its very helpful for their service and operational. For MasterCard, its not easy because they are already tied up with the bank and if they take wrong steps they will contaminate their names and create a gap with their business partners.