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h1. Becoming a Ripple Gateway
An existing online financial service, such as a payment system or digital currency exchanges, can provide additional value to customers by acting as a Ripple Gateway. This provides users the ability to send cross-currency payments to users linked by other Ripple Gateways, and potentially provides a new revenue source for balances deposited, withdrawn, or transferred in Ripple.
Expanding an existing exchange system to support Ripple is a relatively simple task. This document explains the concepts necessary to set up a system, and covers the details of doing so.
h2. Ripple Gateways Explained
A Ripple Gateway is an entity that exchanges balances in the Ripple Network for balances in the Ripple Network -- in other words, performing deposits and withdrawals from Ripple. Typically, a Gateway holds money (or other assets of value) outside of Ripple, and creates issuances in the Ripple Network that represent that money and can be sent, traded, and exchanged atomically in Ripple.
A digital exchange already accepts withdrawals and deposits from users using some existing system. In the United States,