A combined article surveillance and product identification system (10) is formed of conventional elements, of which some are modified. Included in the system are conventional EAS detection equipment (14), hard EAS tags with RFID circuitry insatlled in the hard tag enclosure, a tag detaching device (26) modified to include product data reading and transaction data writing capabilities, and a point-of-sale terminal (22) modified to interact with the detaching device. The point-of-sale terminal triggers operation of the detaching device to separate the hard tag from an article of merchandise in response to data read from the tag by the detaching device and relayed to the point-of-sale terminal.