Deeply cultivating the fertile ground of data elements marketization to release the value of data elements and help banks’ digital transformation, which is a key initiative to make a great article of digital finance and to fully exert the financial blood supply function. Based on the panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2021, the impact of data element marketization on the banks’ digital transformation is deeply explored. The results show that data elements marketization helps to promote banks’ digital transformation, while this impact exhibits significant heterogeneous characteristics in terms of city capacity, financial resilience and business credit environment. Mechanism analysis reveals that resource allocation efficiency is the channel through which data elements marketization promotes banks’ digital transformation, and fintech and banking competition play a positive moderating effect in the process of data elements marketization empowering banks’ digital transformation. The economic consequence test finds that the facilitating effect of data elements marketization on banks’ digital transformation can further act on the development of the real economy. Theoretical and practical references are provided for the implementation path of banks’ digital transformation.