Hosted onboarding is member acquisition run as a hosted flow: a page the platform serves on the program's behalf, where a brand-new prospect signs up, gives consent, and walks away with a new pass in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. It is reached from anywhere a link or QR code can live, campaigns, receipts, posters, packaging, social bios, and on iPhone it can also open as an App Clip from an NFC tag, so holding the phone near a poster starts the join. It needs no app and no development work from the merchant.
The word that matters is "new". Many vendors host a page that delivers a pass to someone who already exists in a system; that is distribution, an add to wallet step with a URL. Hosted onboarding creates the member: it captures their details and consent, registers them in the program and the connected CRM, and issues the pass as the final step. The pass is the outcome of joining, not the whole transaction.
That distinction changes what the wallet channel does for a program. Distribution moves existing members to a better card format, which is valuable but bounded by the membership you already have. Acquisition grows the program itself, and because the flow ends in the wallet, every new member arrives already carrying the pass, already reachable, already identifiable at the till.
When comparing platforms, open each vendor's hosted page and ask one question: does this create a member, or deliver a pass? The answer sorts the market cleanly.