Circuits and methods are disclosed that allow devices to control the flow of DMA transfers to or from the devices using a token based protocol. In one example implementation, a DMA circuit includes a transfer control circuit that performs data transfers over a first data channel of a device, when transactions on the first data channel are enabled. The DMA circuit includes a flow control circuit that increments a token count for a data channel of a device when a token for the data channel is received and decrements the token count for each data transfer on the data channel performed by the DMA circuit. The flow control circuit enables data transfers on the data channel when the token count is greater than 0, and otherwise, disables data transfers on the data channel.