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Ben Markowitz and the last five minutes of buying a car
After JP Morgan and Citadel, Ben Markowitz co-founded Clerq to fix the awkward final act of a big purchase. The work has taken him from payments investing to dealership workflows - and the occasional 8 a.m. password reset.
Clerq
Clerq is a New York-based fintech building an account-to-account (A2A) bank payments platform for high-ticket transactions. It lets merchants - starting with automotive and powersports dealerships - accept low-cost, guaranteed payments pulled directly from a customer's bank account, with card-like ease and no chargeback, fraud, or funding risk. Founded in 2022 by former Citadel and JP Morgan investors Truett Dwyer and Ben Markowitz, Clerq raised a $12M Series A led by 645 Ventures in October 2025, bringing total funding to roughly $21M.