Windows Phone 8 Wallet hub beats Apple's iOS 6 Passbook
Last week Apple revealed Passbook for iOS 6 and people were pretty impressed to see a single app that brings together the data people use in lots of other apps. Microsoft just blew Passbook out of the water with their Windows Phone 8 Wallet hub announcement.
Passbook is an app the lets you load up boarding passes, loyalty cards, movie tickets, and more into a single place. Similar to the scanning methods I wrote about earlier, you will be able to use your iOS device to show the bar code for these services. There are some slick lock screen functions, but that appears to be it for Passbook.
On the other hand the new Wallet hub on Windows Phone 8, covered in detail by The Verge, integrates these same loyalty cards, boarding passes, and other services and then takes it a few steps further with credit and debit cards along with NFC functionality. You will be able to either scan a code or tap to make transactions via NFC. The hub also integrates deals from vendors and works across applications for mapping and other more extensive functions (tying bank apps to the Wallet hub).
I like Google Wallet on my Galaxy Nexus, but it is a compeletly broken experience since carriers block access and there are serious issues with reliability. Microsoft solves this issue by including Wallet hub on all Windows Phones, including those with Mango.