How many people or departments are involved in your payment process from start to finish?

I've been spending a lot of time looking at payment operations recently, and one thing that keeps surprising me is how many organizations don't have a clear picture of what happens between a customer deciding to pay and the money actually arriving where it's supposed to.

In some cases it's straightforward.

Customer pays → processor → bank → Billing platform

In other cases, there are multiple systems involved:

• Customer service
• Billing platform
• Payment processor
• ERP
• Reconciliation team
• Finance
• Collections

By the time the transaction is fully processed, several people and systems may have touched it.

I'm curious:

How many people or departments are involved in your payment process from start to finish?

And where do you see the biggest bottleneck today?