The banks aren't the ones taking the loss for scams since their system doesn't have any faults, it's you or your computer that authorized the translation. I can see the reasoning for the push to more secure transactions. We constantly have people being scammed of their life savings due to sophisticated attacks beyond their understanding.

I assume an old person cares about not being left poor and helpless in retirement more than they care about free software and computing freedom.

I think it's probably likely that we will end up in a situation where some devices like phones and maybe laptops are considered "secure environments" where banking transactions and such can be safely executed, while alternative devices will be available for complete freedom and tinkering. You'll likely always be able to run any program you want on your laptop but those programs will be limited to their own sandbox rather than having free access to any other programs data.